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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>Although he presented only four ways to do it, Paul Simon suggested there must be 50 ways to leave your lover. Whether or not there actually are 50 ways to leave your lover, there are certainly more than 80 ways to say "knep dig selv " to someone. For those of you who don't know, knep dig selv is Danish for lech tiezdayen , which is Hebrew for "go fuck yourself." And if you really wanted to get creative, you could tell someone to "nenda kutomba, nakata tatu ," which is Swahili for "fuck yourself, in triplicate." </p><p>Anyone who has ever studied foreign languages knows firsthand that what you learn from books and classrooms prepares you for only so much, and then you're on your own to figure out what it means when someone in Finland tells you, "Päässäsi tekee kusi patoja ja paska puroja ." But thanks to Curse &amp; Berate in 69+ Languages (Soft Skull Press, 284 pages, $13.95), you now have a useful tool that lets you know when some Finnish faszszopó has just told you, "In your mind's eye, dams are built of piss and rivers flow with shit." (Faszszopó is Hungarian for "cocksucker," in case you were wondering). </p><p>Written and edited by R. V. Branham, who's also the editor of the multi-lingual Portland lit journal Gobshite Quarterly , Curse &amp; Berate is an indispensable resource for finding just the right way to say "vai chupar merda, o seu filho da puta "--which is Portuguese for "go suck on shit, you son of a bitch"--so as to get into less trouble than if you just came right out and said it. "From a very early age I always noticed that those people who don't have anything nice to say and who don't pull their punches have the most fun," says Barnham, explaining part of what inspired Curse &amp; Berate , which he has been working on in one form or another since 1984. </p><p>Overflowing with invectives, curses and blasphemous belittlings, the book is more than a resource guide for becoming a multilingual potty mouth. This is a valuable tool for bridging communication barriers, making it possible to say such important things as "millananyawshanmi "--Quechua for "I feel like throwing up"--and "nej, jeg har ikke en præservativ, har du ?"--Danish for "I don't have a condom, do you?" </p><p>"Hopefully, this book will prove helpful in filling gaps in people's knowledge of a language--warts and all--and also be a lot of fun," says assistant editor and contributor Channing Dodson. And you know what I say to that? Danke. -- <em>Willamette Weekly</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>For those times when “you blackguard!” just won’t do, <em>Sinister Wisdom</em> supplies an amazing array of crude, vulgar, offensive, scurrilous, lewd, and otherwise unprintable denunciations. Organized thematically and translated into more than 69 languages, it contains an alphabetical listing of every conceivable (and inconceivable) slur and insult, from comments on mothers' peculiar anatomy and hobbies, to suggestions on where to go and how, to observations on how others spend their solitary moments. Appendices cover blasphemies, bodily functions, sexual deviations, and variations on “yo mama!” </p>

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<h3>From</h3><p>Acclaimed cookbook author Harris (The Africa Cookbook, 1998) tells the story of the African diaspora through food, from the foodstuff brought along with African slaves to barely maintain them on the Middle Passage to the undeniable imprint of African American cuisine on southern American and Caribbean food. She traces African foods (yams, okra, black-eyed peas, corn), flavoring, cooking methods, and food rituals from the abduction of Africans and enslavement in the Americas to travel throughout the American and European continents, recounting tribulations and joy. Along the way, she profiles famous and obscure but gifted cooks; cooks in the big houses of slave plantations; “Pig Foot” Mary, who grew wealthy from sales of food she cooked on a stove mounted on a baby carriage; chefs who served meals to presidents; and members of a cooperative of black hoteliers in Philadelphia in the nineteenth century. Along with historical context, Harris offers recollections from her own travels and ends with selected recipes. Photographs enhance this passionate perspective on the culinary history of the African diaspora. --Vanessa Bush </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“Absorbing…Ms. Harris has an eye for detail and an inquisitive manner on the page, qualities that take any writer a long way.”<strong>—Dwight Garner, <em>New York</em>_ Times_</strong></p><p>“Harris covers a lot of territory economically, offering a tremendous cast of characters whose names deserve wider renown.”<strong>—William Grimes, <em>New York Times Book Review</em> </strong></p><p>“Our leading historian of African-American cooking continues her quest to trace the multiplicity of ways that American food has been enriched—and in many ways created—by the Africans who were forced to immigrate to North America and their descendents.” —<strong>Vogue.com</strong></p><p>“Anyone interested in food history will find plenty to savor in Jessica B. Harris’s latest book.”—<strong><em>Saveur Magazine</em></strong></p><p>“A satisfying gumbo of info, insight and research.”—<strong><em>USA Today</em></strong></p><p>“[A]…passionate perspective on the culinary history of the African diaspora”—<strong><em>Booklist</em></strong></p><p>“There is more than enough for every taste in [_High on the Hog_]”—<strong><em>Chicago Tribune</em></strong></p><p>“Harris's flavorful writing moves with an effortless voice that you feel could recite most of these pages from loving memory. As much historical document as ethnography of a vital and rich gastronomy, <em>High on the Hog</em> is a book to make your mouth water.”— <strong><em>Paste </em>magazine</strong></p><p>“Rejoice, all you lovers of the personal and inimitable voice of Jessica B. Harris. In <em>High on the Hog</em>, she has woven her own story into the epic of the African Diaspora, using food to illuminate the intertwined tapestries of Africa, Europe, and America. From General George Washington’s black cook Hercules to New Orleans’ famed Dooky Chase, she shows how important are the African underpinnings of the American table. Harris’s passionate devotion to languages and history, together with her own compassion and wit, resonate with the humanity she espouses in all her books, but especially this one.”—<strong>Betty Fussell, author of <em>Raising Steaks</em> and <em>My Kitchen Wars</em></strong>    </p><p>“_High on the Hog_ is a sweeping yet intimate view of food in African American life and the profound influence of blacks on American food culture. It is unusually well crafted and written with style and grace. Harris is an engaging guide in this journey that begins in Africa and ends in the twenty-first century. Her personal vignettes provide vivid detail of her experiences at sites of historical importance to the subject. She has rescued from obscurity many historical figures who make for fascinating reading and demonstrate the great range and diversity of African American achievement in areas of food culture.”—<em></em>Charles Reagan Wilson, Kelly Gene Cook Sr. professor of history and southern studies, Center for the Study of Southern Culture  </p><p><em></em>“In <em>High on the Hog</em>, the inimitable Jessica B. Harris tells the story of the African American diaspora from the perspective of an accomplished food historian. Food, she tells us, is a metaphor for society. If so, I can’t think of a better one. From slave food to Taste of Ebony, this is a gripping saga laced with descriptions of food that will make your mouth water.”<strong>—Marion Nestle, NYU professor and author of <em>Food Politics</em> and <em>What to Eat</em></strong><strong>__</strong></p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Martin (Song of Ice and Fire series), Dozois (_Strange Days_) and Abraham (_A Shadow in Summer_) revisit classic themes of exploration, exploitation and what it means to be human in this gritty SF adventure. Humanity has finally reached the stars, only to find that all the best spots have been claimed by other races—the Silver Enye, Turu, Cian and others. Human colonists serve as world-building crash-test dummies, dropped onto empty planets deemed too dangerous or inconvenient for other races, to pave over whatever marvels and threats evolution had put there. On the misbegotten colony planet of São Paulo, ore prospector Ramon Espejo has no illusions, especially about how the Enye view humanity. Then Ramon murders the wrong man in a drunken fight and takes off into the wastelands to avoid the Enye authorities. Once in the outback, he discovers he's not the only one trying to hide from the Enye—and that the deadly cat-lizards called <em>chupacabras</em> are far from the worst dangers on São Paulo. This tightly written novel, with its memorable protagonist and intriguing extrapolation, delivers on all levels. <em>(Jan.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>In music, supergroups of established artists are rarely greater than the sum of their parts. The same often goes for science fiction, but critics agreed that these three authors beat the trend by producing a tight, consistent novel. Whether because of Martinâ€™s decades of collaborative work, Dozoisâ€™s long career as an editor, or Abrahamâ€™s fresh prose style, every reviewer said the book seemed as if it were written by one person. The only complaint came from reviewers who had read an earlier, novella-length version of the story; they felt that expanding the story enriched it somewhat, but not by much. While it would be hard to match <em>Hunterâ€™s Run</em> with any of these authorsâ€™ previous works, it can certainly be called a successful experimentâ€"and a compelling SF novel.<br /><em>Copyright © 2004 Phillips &amp; Nelson Media, Inc.</em></p>


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Frank Wynne's remarkable book tells the story of Han van Meegeren, a paranoid, drug-addicted, second-rate painter whose Vermeer forgeries made him a secret superstar of the art world--and along the way, it reveals the collusion and ego that, even today, allow art forgery to thrive. During van Meegeren's heyday as a forger of Vermeers, he earned 50 million dollars, the acclamation of the world's press, and the satisfaction of swindling the Nazis. His canvases were so nearly authentic that they would almost certainly be prized among the catalogue of Vermeers if he had not confessed. And, no doubt, he never would have confessed at all if he hadn't been trapped in a catch-22: he had thrived so noticably during the war that when it ended, he was quickly arrested as a Nazi collaborator. His only defense was to admit that he himself had painted the remarkable "Vermeers" that had passed through his hands--a confession the public refused to believe, until, in a huge media event, the courts staged the public painting of what would be van Meegeren's last "Vermeer." "I Was Vermeer "is an utterly gripping real-life mystery, capturing both the life of the consummate art forger, phenomenally skilled and yet necessarily unrecognized, and the equally fascinating work of the experts who identify forgeries and track down their perpetrators. Wry, amoral, irreverent, and plotted like a thriller, it is the first major book in forty years on this astonishing episode in history. Frank Wynne is a writer and award-winning literary translator. Born in Ireland, he has lived and worked in Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Buenos Aires and currently lives in San Jose, Costa Rica. He has translated more than a dozen major novels, among them the works of Michel Houellebecq, Frederic Beigbeder, Pierre Merot and the Ivorian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma. A journalist and broadcaster, he has written for the "Sunday Times," the "Independent," the "Irish Times," "Melody Maker," and "Time Out." Frank Wynne's book tells the story of Han van Meegeren, a paranoid, drug-addicted, second-rate painter whose Vermeer forgeries made him a secret star of the art world. Along the way, it reveals the collusion and ego that, even today, allow art forgery to thrive. During van Meegeren's heyday as a forger of Vermeer, he earned fifty million dollars, the acclamation of the world's press, and the satisfaction of swindling the Nazis. His canvases were so nearly authentic that they would almost certainly be prized among the catalogue of Vermeer's if he had not confessed. And, no doubt, he never would have confessed at all if he hadn't been trapped in a catch-22: he had thrived so noticably during the war that when it ended, he was quickly arrested as a Nazi collaborator. His only defense was to admit that he himself had painted the remarkable "Vermeers" that had passed through his hands--a confession the public refused to believe until, in a huge media event, the courts staged the public painting of what would be van Meegeren's final "Vermeer." "I Was Vermeer "is an utterly gripping real-life mystery, capturing both the life of the consummate art forger, phenomenally skilled and yet necessarily unrecognized, and the equally fascinating work of the experts who identify forgeries and track down their perpetrators. Wry, amoral, irreverent, and plotted like a thriller, it is the first major book in forty years on this astonishing episode in history. "Wynne blends reportorial skill with a love of irony to tell van Meegeren's life story . . . Crime thriller or forgery primer, this intriguing read also proves another epigram: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."--"Bookpage" "A spectacular story of vengeance and fraud told with verve and style by British journalist Wynne . . . The incredible story of how Dutch painter Han van Meegeren avenged himself on supercilious art critics by becoming an expert forger of Vermeer and fooling the Nazis conveys a valuable lesson in how we see, notes Wynne in this methodical, suspenseful tale . . . The forger's trajectory from wealthy charlatan to national hero makes for delicious reading. Wynne employs all the devices of an expert "roman" "policier.""--"Kirkus Reviews""" "Some real-life stories are more fantastic than anything Hollywood can invent. That a mid-20th-century artist could create forgeries that fooled the entire art world is the extraordinary story of Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren. Recognizing that very few Johannes Vermeer paintings were known in his time and that there were no known early Vermeers, Meergeren realized he could create works that could not be compared to any authenticated Vermeer. Those fakes fooled everyone: art scholars, museum curators, and Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Goring included. Meegeren's deception was only discovered when he confessed it in court to save himself. London-based journalist and literary translator Wynne uses his journalistic skills to present a remarkable story that is part mystery, part adventure, part biography, and part courtroom drama. His thorough research and accomplished writing style bring this unique event in art history to the general public. Highly recommended."--Eugene C. Burt, "Library Journal" "In this intriguing . . . biography, Wynne recounts how Dutch forger Han van Meegeren successfully passed off more than a dozen bogus works--including, most famously, The Supper at Emmaus in 1937--as authentic Vermeers, Halses and de Hooches. Van Meegeren, who favored the style of the old Dutch masters just as modernism was hitting its stride, decided to embarrass his forward-looking critics by creating and selling his own 'Vermeer.' He continued his charade until he was forced to admit his crimes in 1947 while defending himself against a separate charge of treason. Wynne takes great care in explaining just how the increasingly paranoid and drug-addicted van Meegeren managed to fool the international art community, including a technical breakdown of how van Meegeren employed plastic to create the antique look of cracked craquelure in his canvases. Wynne also ruminates on how the arrogance of the art world--of critics like Abraham Bredius who were so confident in their ability to spot fakes that they brushed aside X-rays and other modern tests, as well as collectors desperate for authenticity--fuels the market for forgeries."--"Publishers Weekly"


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Fans of Curious Cook Harold McGee will relish the latest from This (_Molecular Gastronomy_), a French chemist and foodie hero who has helped to usher in the current restaurant world vogue for turning the kitchen into a laboratory. This uses simple questions and observations about food (Does hot pepper burn a hole in the stomach?; Why must infants not be fed sausages?) as springboards for delightful explorations into culinary scientific principles. In brief, confident chapters, he moves through assorted ingredients (milk, vegetables, cheese), cooking methods (steaming, roasting, deep-frying) and whole categories of food and drink (bread, cake, sauces, salad) in his quest to explain kitchen phenomena. The book is more practical than theoretical, as This often breezes over much of the science, focusing not on the experiments and equations that answered his questions but rather on what they mean for the cook: how to ripen tomatoes properly, why to cook a roux for a long time, and so on. He distances himself even further from typical scientific writing with his charmingly enthusiastic tone, which keeps his prose from sounding dry even when he goes into more details about enzyme properties or protein varieties, so that even those who might be turned off by the thought of food chemistry will quickly be drawn in by his obvious love of food and eagerness to apply his research to helping people cook better. <em>(Dec.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Fans of 'Curious Cook' Harold McGee will relish the latest from This ( <em>Molecular Gastronomy</em>), a French chemist and foodie hero who has helped to usher in the current restaurant world vogue for turning the kitchen into a laboratory.... Even those who might be turned off by the thought of food chemistry will quickly be drawn in by his obvious love of food and eagerness to apply his research to helping people cook better." -- <em>Publishers Weekly</em></p><p>"This has made invisible processes visible, revealed the mysteries, and the bread has risen, baked, and been enjoyed." -- Claudia Kousoulas, <em>Appetite for Books</em></p><p>"Cooks who want to learn more about the chemistry and physics that make their efforts possible will discover useful things here." -- <em>Booklist</em></p><p>"This's molecular gastronomy is garnished with the author's own rich philosophy of food and flavor." -- Peter Barham, <em>Nature</em></p><p>"An exuberant paean for the role of science in cooking... This's book performs a great service." -- Len Fisher, <em>Times Higher Education Supplement</em></p><p>"This book should be in every kitchen." -- Christine Sismondo, <em>Toronto Star</em></p><p>"[An] eye-opening book." -- Kate Colquhoun, <em>Portsmouth Herald</em></p><p>"Witty and humorous... [readers] whose eyes glaze over at the very mention of electrons may find themselves becoming entranced by This' graceful descriptions of essential chemical reactions." -- Lynn Harnett, <em>Seacoast Sunday</em></p><p>"Well crafted, sprinkled with insight, and containing a menagerie of information, <em>Kitchen Mysteries</em> is a wonderful trip down a stellar buffet line." -- J. Edward Sumerau, <em>Metro Spirit</em></p><p>" <em>Kitchen Mysteries</em> is another tour de force for the French scientific chef... Highly Recommended." -- <em>Choice</em></p><p>"This's book offers expert explanations that give the reader a better understanding of both cooking and cuisine. As such, it is enticing." -- Pierre Laszlo, <em>Chemical Heritage</em></p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>This popular study guide helps students master complex Latin morphology and syntax by presenting them in a concise, systematic, and simplified manner. <em>Latin Grammar</em> explains everything students need to understand in order to read the Latin classics, without inundating them with exhaustive lists of minutiae. </p><h3>From the Back Cover</h3><p>Master the fundamentals of Latin grammar with Schaum's­­the high-performance study guide. It will help you cut study time, hone problem-solving skills, and achieve your personal best on exams and projects! </p><p>Students love Schaum's Outlines because they produce results. Each year, hundreds of thousands of students improve their test scores and final grades with these indispensable study guides. </p><p>Get the edge on your classmates. Use Schaum's! </p><p>If you don't have a lot of time but want to excel in class, this book helps you: </p><ul><li>     Use detailed examples to solve problems  </li> <li>     Brush up before tests  </li> <li>     Find answers fast  </li> <li>     Study quickly and more effectively  </li> <li>     Get the big picture without poring over lengthy textbooks  </li></ul><p>Schaum's Outlines give you the information your teachers expect you to know in a handy and succinct format­­without overwhelming you with unnecessary jargon. You get a complete overview of the subject. Plus, you get plenty of practice exercises to test your skill. Compatible with any classroom text, Schaum's let you study at your own pace and remind you of all the important facts you need to remember­­fast! And Schaum's are so complete, they're perfect for preparing for graduate or professional exams. </p><p>Inside, you will find: </p><ul><li>     Clear, concise explanation of Latin language structure  </li> <li>     Understandable format for learning parts of speech and syntax  </li> <li>     Structured and simplified approach to Latin morphology  </li> <li>     Glossaries of Latin words  </li></ul><p>If you want top grades and a thorough understanding of Latin grammar, this powerful study tool is the best tutor you can have! </p>

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<div><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>This substantial volume presents a rich and varied collection of tales from the Ojibwe (Chippewa) tradition while also integrating material from associated Algonquian tribes who migrated westward for centuries before European contact. Ten Indian elders from the northwestern United States and Canada provide narratives in their native language, with English translations appearing on the facing pages. Each participant is profiled, and his contributions (assembled over several years) follow in numbered paragraphs. These contributions present various aspects of Ojibwe daily life, including fishing, maple sugaring, ricing, devilish childhood tricks, religious ceremonies, and more. Drawn from both printed and oral sources, the stories are meticulously and sensitively translated and annotated, giving shape, form, and nuance to a fragile, almost extinct civilization. This preservation project will be a vital addition to Native American lore and is certain to be treasured by comprehensive collections in special and academic libraries. Richard K. Burns, MSLS, Hatboro, PA <br>Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>A language carries a people's memories, whether they are recounted as individual reminiscences, as communal history, or as humorous tales. This collection of stories from Anishinaabe elders offers a history of a people at the same time that it seeks to preserve the language of that people. Based on interviews Treuer conducted with ten elders this anthol-ogy presents the elders' stories transcribed in Ojibwe with English translation on facing pages. These stories contain a wealth of information, including oral histories of the Anishinaabe people and personal reminiscences, educational tales, and humorous anecdotes. Treuer's translations of these stories preserve the speakers' personalities, allowing their voices to emerge from the page. Treuer introduces each speaker, offering a brief biography and noting important details concerning dialect or themes; he then allows the stories to speak for themselves. This dual-language text will prove instructive for those interested in Ojibwe language and culture, while the stories themselves offer the gift of a living language and the history of a people. </p>

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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Cheese making is an art and an absorbing pastime. Geared to the hobbyist, this book will turn anyone into a cheese artist. Most of the equipment you need is already in your kitchen, and with investing more patience than cash, your cheeses will far surpass their commercial counterparts in flavor and freshness. Included are: Inspiring, colorful photographs of artisan cheeses Recipes for gourmet cheeses and everyday favorites, with enticing variations Step by step illustrated techniques for fresh cheeses, molded cheeses, and aged cheeses What can go wrong tips that help you avoid cheese making pitfalls Profiles of master cheese makers who share professional tips and advice Tips on discovering the best fruits, breads, nuts, wine, and beer to complement every kind of cheese, and how to present, serve, and properly store your cheeses</p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Twenty-two acclaimed writers celebrate the art of eating   Wendell Berry • Colette • William Corbett • Michael Dorris • Alexandre Dumas • M. F .K. Fisher • Michael Frank • Betty Fussell • Evan Jones • Judith B. Jones • Barbara Kafka • Madeline Kamman • Charles Lamb • Rose Macaulay • Henry Matthews • Joyce Carol Oates • Francine Prose • Paul Schmidt • James Seay • Charles Simic • Edward Steinberg • Alice Waters   There is more to be gained from our daily bread than mere sustenance. Curiosity, romance, ritual, and insight can be as much a part of a meal as any of its edible ingredients. In this delectable collection of essays on fine food and drink, twenty-two renowned writers capture the gestures, the celebrations, and the moments in which food, wine, and the act of eating transcend their initial purposes to become something far greater. A window into the eating lives of a handful of our finest literary artists, Not for Bread Alone is a tasty and most satisfying delight—a true culinary classic.</p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>With "no-knead" bread recipes all the rage now, expert baker Reinhart (_Whole Grain Breads_) has come back with a process that is slightly more involved but much more productive than the limited classic no-knead method, yielding all manner of sweet, savory and sandwich breads. He introduces a "stretch and fold" technique that, combined with a slow rise and without the lengthy prefermentation that his and other artisan bakers' recipes usually require, means more freedom and less active work time, but still a very flavorful product. To make French baguettes, for example, only one brief knead is required; then, after an overnight or multiday rise, the dough is ready for shaping—much better than being shackled to the kitchen for an entire morning for multiple rises, as is usually the case in baguette making. Other great breads, such as focaccia, soft cheese bread and even panettone, get similar preparation makeovers. Reinhart occasionally calls for a starter, but his carefully constructed, nonintimidating mother starter method should encourage the wary. For bakers who have come to bread through the no-knead route, Reinhart's thorough, detailed recipes offer a perfect way to expand their repertoire without getting their hands too sticky or giving up too much of their time, while those who are already fans will appreciate having a little more room in their schedule while still producing terrific breads. <em>(Nov.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“Peter Reinhart is the Leonardo da Vinci of bread; his recipes are foolproof, his research exhaustive and yet a delight to read and follow, and his hunger for knowledge and technique is boundless and infinite. He is without a doubt the definitive source of true style and information when it comes to all things baked and delicious, and my go-to guy for all things leavened and sandwichable”<br />--Mario Batali, author of <em>Molto Italiano</em>  </p><p>“I’ve been using Peter’s overnight pizza dough technique religiously for years--mix, knead, chill overnight, shape, bake. So simple, and minimal planning is required. In this book, many of the recipes use a similar approach–no poolish or pre-fermenting. From pain au levain and pretzels to panettone and pizza dough, all the greatest hits and every day favorites are covered.”<br />--Heidi Swanson, author of <em>Super Natural Cooking</em>  </p><p>“Peter Reinhart’s thoughtful, steadying presence combined with his matchless teaching skills and down-to-earth approach make reading and using <em>Artisan Breads Every Day</em> a great pleasure. His information demystifying the preparation and use of sourdough starters is both much needed and superb.”<br />--Nancy Baggett, author of <em>Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Breads</em>  </p><p>“For most cooks, artisan bread baking is close to metaphysics. And each succeeding book about it only tends to deepen the mysteries and make trying it even more unlikely. <em>Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day</em> is one of the first books of its kind that actually made me want to stop reading and start baking.”<br />--Russ Parsons, author of <em>How to Peel a Peach</em></p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>From <em>The Last Speakers</em></strong> <br />Click on the photos below to open larger images.</p><p>Photo by K. David Harrison</p><p>Photo by Kelly J. Richardson</p><p>Photo by Chris Rainier</p><p>Photo by Chris Rainier</p><p>Photo by Gregory Anderson</p><p>Photo by Chris Rainier</p><p>Photo by Chris Rainier</p><p>Photo by Kelly J. Richardson</p><hr /><h3>From</h3><p>Parallel to the extinction of biological species in our world, human languages are disappearing one by one. These tongues originated over millennia inside geographically isolated communities for whom modern methods of transportation and communication have proven mixed blessings. Harrison details the work of linguists who are speeding to preserve these tongues for posterity. He travels to Siberia to meet Aunt Marta, one of the last speakers of Tofa, a Turkic tongue. Although a scientist and a rigorous analyst of language grammars and structures, Harrison is particularly intrigued by the personalities of these mostly elderly yet fully engaged people who bravely face the end of what has been a nurturing society. Harrison compellingly details reasons why the rest of the world ought to care about these vanishing languages and what can be done to ensure that they live on despite the irresistible ascendancy of today’s rapidly evolving world culture. --Mark Knoblauch </p>


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<div><meta charset="utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 11px; "><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11px; ">The star of these stories is Father Brown, a character created by writer G. K. Chesterton. Based on a parish priest who was partially responsible for Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism in 1922, Brown is a stubby Catholic priest equipped with a large umbrella, a formless outfit and a sharp insight into the human nature. The stories included here are:</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11px; "></p><ul><li>The Absence of Mr Glass</li><li>The Paradise of Thieves</li><li>The Duel of Dr Hirsch</li><li>The Man in the Passage</li><li>The Mistake of the Machine</li><li>The Head of Caesar</li><li>The Purple Wig</li><li>The Perishing of the Pendragons</li><li>The God of the Gongs</li><li>The Salad of Colonel Cray</li><li>The Strange Crime of John Boulnois</li><li>The Fairy Tale of Father Brown</li></ul></span></div>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Most WW II homefront novels are unambiguous in their approach to patriots and traitors, allies and enemies. Hahn's subtle, thought-provoking work, however, proposes the legitimacy of a variety of ethical responses to critical situations. Margaret's brother Jimmy is overseas fighting, and Margaret and her parents avidly follow news of Allied advances. She and best friend Elizabeth, united in their dislike of Gordy the bully, slowly uncover several ominous secrets: Gordy is helping his older brother Stuart, an Army deserter, hide in a weatherworn shack in the woods; and Gordy's father batters his mother, his siblings and Gordy himself. At first Margaret and Elizabeth see their discovery of Stuart's shack as a way to "blackmail" Gordy into treating them decently, but when Stuart falls dangerously ill, the girls feel obliged to help care for him. Soon they begin to reexamine the standard propaganda about the war. While some of her characters seem anachronistic and certain developments are unlikely, Hahn succeeds in raising questions as valuable as they are vexing. Ages 9-12. <br>Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 5-8-- The complex arguments for and against pacifism are woven into this involving story of a girl's experiences on the home front during World War II. Margaret, 11, and her boisterous friend Elizabeth hate the school bully, Gordy. They discover that a man living in the woods whom they had thought of as crazy is actually Gordy's gentle brother, who has deserted a war he feels he cannot morally fight. When Stuart nearly dies of pneumonia, the girls join forces with Gordy to get help and they gain insight into Gordy's difficult life with his alcoholic, abusive father. Well-drawn characters and a satisfying plot keep this from deteriorating into a message novel. The issues raised are presented from diverse points of view, and no easy answers are given. Margaret struggles with her feelings about her brother fighting (and ultimately dying) in a war that Stuart has deserted. She realizes, however, that Stuart's conscientious objection is not the black-and-white, coward vs. patriot matter her parents believe it to be. Although clearly set in the '40s with characters that are true to their time, their problems and feelings are not dated and should interest today's readers. There is plenty of action and page-turning suspense to please those who want a quick read, but there is much to ponder and reflect on as well. --Louise L. Sherman, Anna C. Scott School, Leonia, NJ<br>Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Bestseller Anne McCaffrey (The Skies of Pern) collects four tales of Pern in A Gift of Dragons, including a new adventure written especially for this volume, "Ever the Twain." Tom Kidd's illustrations of cuddly dragons and their human companions add extra value.<br />Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>A dragon-hatching at Ista Weyr provides twin brother and sister Neru and Nian with their first crisis of love and duty in "Ever the Twain," original to this illustrated collection of four Pern stories by McCaffrey. Also included are "The Smallest Dragonboy," about a young boy's fervent desire to bond with a baby dragon; the author's classic "The Girl Who Heard Dragons," the story of a girl with an unusual talent; and "Runner of Pern," a tale involving one of Pern's most important and least glamorous occupations. Tom Kidd's moody, atmospheric illustrations give a visual focus to these tales and help create a work of the imagination that belongs in most libraries. <br />Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> Instead of going into seclusion when she’s stood up at the altar, librarian Faith West takes off by herself to lick her wounds at her would-be honeymoon spot on the Italian coast. She expects to spend her Mediterranean vacation alone, but, as fate would have it, she meets Caine Hunter, the man of every woman’s dream. However, it turns out that fate has nothing to do with their encounter. Caine is a spy working for a sworn enemy of Faith’s father. Should she kiss Caine or kill him? After all, he’s the second man to do her wrong in just a matter of days. And how does Caine feel about this assignment gone awry? For lighthearted contemporary romance, it’s hard to beat Linz. Filled with believable characters and witty dialogue, her books never fail to entertain. And for librarians, a spunky heroine representing that profession is a rare treat. --Shelley Mosley </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>After being jilted at the altar, librarian Faith West goes on her Italian honeymoon solo, but doesn't stay that way too long. And though her sexy rebound man has ulterior motives, feelings surface that neither of them are prepared for.   </p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>'One of the century's great masters of English prose . . . It is never too late to read or reread Evelyn Waugh' Time In this unique collection of short stories composed between 192562, Evelyn Waugh's stand-alone tales are brought together with some of the pieces which later became the inspirations for his novels. 'Mr Loveday's Little Outing' is a blackly comic tale of a mental asylum and its favourite resident; 'Cruise' sees a hilarious series of letters from a naive young woman as she travels with her family; 'A House of Gentlefolks' observes a group of elderly eccentric aristocrats and their young heir; and in 'The Sympathetic Passenger' a radio-loathing retiree picks up exactly the wrong hitchhiker. These witty and immaculately crafted stories display the finest writing of a master of satire and comic twists.</p>


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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>“…engrossing memoir"" <strong>— LA Magazine  </strong>“Graham’s telling of the overwrought work environment at Latham Watkins brings John Grisham’s <em>The Associate </em>to real life.” <strong>—New York Journal of Books</strong>    “Inspiring, crisply written, and gripping, this behind-the-scenes account of one man’s pursuit of justice is highly recommended.” <strong>—Tucson Citizen  </strong>""This is the story of a first-year law associate juggling a pro bono murder case on top of the long hours and numerous issues going on in the firm where he works. I'm recommending it for anyone who has experienced the legal system from the inside<strong>—</strong>or out."" <strong>—IndieBound  </strong> “Did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did ...Definitely worth the read.  Better than most else in the genre, for sure.”  <strong>—Jeremy Blachman, author of  Anonymous Lawyer   </strong></p><hr><h3>Product Description</h3><p>The story—part memoir, part hard-hitting expose—of a first-year law associate negotiating the arduous path through a system designed to break those who enter it before it makes them. </p><p>Landing a job at a prestigious L.A. law firm, complete with a six figure income, signaled the beginning of the good life for Ian Graham. But the harsh reality of life as an associate quickly became evident. The work was grueling and boring, the days were impossibly long, and Graham’s main goal was to rack up billable hours. But when he took an unpaid pro bono case to escape the drudgery, Graham found the meaning in his work that he’d been looking for. As he worked to free Mario Rocha, a gifted young Latino who had been wrongly convicted at 16 and sentenced to life without parole, the shocking contrast between the quest for money and power and Mario’s desperate struggle for freedom led Graham to look long and hard at his future as a corporate lawyer. </p><p>Clear-eyed and moving, written with the drama and speed of a John Grisham novel and the personal appeal of Scott Turow’s account of his law school years, <em>Unbillable Hours</em> is an arresting personal story with implications for all of us. </p>

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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p><em></em>For every secret  </p><p><em></em>Detective Lindsay Boxer's long-awaited wedding celebration becomes a distant memory when she is called to investigate a horrendous crime: a badly injured teenage girl is left for dead, and her newborn baby is nowhere to be found. Lindsay discovers that not only is there no trace of the criminals--but that the victim may be keeping secrets as well.  </p><p><strong>For every lie</strong>  </p><p>At the same time, Assistant District Attorney Yuki Castellano is prosecuting the biggest case of her life--a woman who has been accused of murdering her husband in front of her two young children. Yuki's career rests on a guilty verdict, so when Lindsay finds evidence that could save the defendant, she is forced to choose. Should she trust her best friend or follow her instinct?  </p><p><strong>There's a different way to die</strong>  </p><p>Lindsay's every move is watched by her new boss, Lieutenant Jackson Brady, and when the pressure to find the baby begins interfering with her new marriage to Joe, she wonders if she'll ever be able to start a family. With James Patterson's white-hot speed and unquenchable action, <em>10th Anniversary </em>is the most deliciously chilling Women's Murder Club book ever. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>James Patterson has had more <em>New York Times</em> bestsellers than any other writer, ever, according to <em>Guinness World Records</em>. Since his first novel won the Edgar Award in 1977, James Patterson's books have sold more than 205 million copies. He is the author of the Alex Cross novels<strong>,</strong> the most popular detective series of the past twenty-five years, including <em>Kiss the Girls </em>and <em>Along Came a Spider</em>. Mr. Patterson also writes the bestselling Women's Murder Club novels, set in San Francisco, and the top-selling New York detective series of all time, featuring Detective Michael Bennett. He writes full-time and lives in Florida with his family.  </p><p>Maxine Paetro is the author of three novels, two works of nonfiction, and the coauthor of seven books with James Patterson. She lives in New York with her husband. </p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>In <em>Manhattan Hunt Club</em> John Saul plumbs the depths of the Manhattan underground--the network of subway tunnels and secret caverns and chambers where the homeless denizens of the city have created their own society. It's a world Jeff Converse, a young college student convicted of a crime he didn't commit, never knew existed until he is plunged into it after an "accident" that occurs while he is being transported to prison. He soon realizes that it's no accident, but the opening move in a deadly game being played by some of the city's most powerful men and women, a game in which he is the prey and they are the hunters. Jeff's only chance to make it to the surface and survive lies in allying himself with a homicidal maniac who's appointed himself the young man's protector, but whose designs on Jeff are almost as lethal as those of his enemies in the Manhattan Hunt Club.</p><p>Saul made his reputation in the horror genre, but he now focuses on psychological terrors rather than things that go bump in the night. His narrative gifts are displayed to great advantage in this heart-stopping thriller; the pacing is flawless and the central characters are very well developed. What keeps this from living up to its fullest potential is the inadequate motivation of the villains, who are largely one-dimensional cardboard cutouts. But that won't keep this otherwise topnotch thriller off the bestseller lists, where Saul (<strong>, </strong>), like Stephen King, is a perennial contender for the number one spot. <em>--Jane Adams</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Why mess with success? Twenty-four novels and 24 years down the road, Saul continues to deliver the same sleek pulp entertainment that he's been selling in high numbers since his debut with Suffer the Children in 1977. This time out, Saul sets his melodramatics mostly below the surface of Manhattan, in the tunnels populated by the homeless. Because of mistaken eyewitness testimony, Columbia University architecture student Jeff Converse has been convicted of attempted rape and attempted murder. En route to Rikers Island, the police van carrying Jeff is rammed, and Jeff is taken by a homeless man into the tunnels, only to be locked in a room with another prisoner, homicidal maniac Francis Jagger. Days later, Jeff and Jagger are released into the tunnels, told that if they make it to the outside world, they live; if they don't, they die. Eventually we learn that an elite group of Manhattan power brokers has created a club devoted to hunting convicted malefactors and having their bodies stuffed in the manner of big game trophies, using the underground homeless as beaters in the hunt. Meanwhile, Jeff's fianc‚e and father search desperately for Jeff, first above ground, then below. The novel builds suspense steadily, but reaches full steam only when Saul plunges his principals mercilessly into the stygian underworld of Manhattan. The premise of a Manhattan Hunt Club skirts absurdity, as do the villainous members of the club, but Saul scores points about society's treatment of the homeless. The prose is serviceable, the action rough, intense and often distasteful in other words, this is vintage Saul. (Aug.)Forecast: With major ad/promo, including a sample chapter in the mass market edition (June) of Saul's Nightshade, this will reach the author's fans. Expect many to travel with Saul into the nasty depths, only to breathe deeply as they look up from the book to a sandy beach and clean ocean waves.</p><p>Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.</p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Witemeyer follows her delightful first novel, A Tailor-Made Bride, with another tale of romance in America's West. Teacher Adelaide Proctor follows Henry Belcher to Fort Worth, Tex., but discovers her Prince Charming is a rogue. Instead of the marriage she planned, Adelaide becomes governess to Isabella, daughter of English-born sheep rancher Gideon Westcott. Adelaide comes to love both the mute, troubled Isabella and her father, but forces beyond their control are heading from England to Texas. Viscount Reginald Petchey wants his niece's fortune and will do anything to get it, even murder and kidnapping. But Petchey doesn't factor in Adelaide's determination and Gideon's love for his daughter. A final standoff is a nail-biter as a child's life and a family's future hang in the balance. Witemeyer's sophomore tale is entertaining and exciting, though fans may wish for the insightful discussions of her first. Readers won't be disappointed, however, in the strong, lovable Adelaide and her ultimate Prince Charming. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Adelaide Proctor is a young woman with her head in the clouds, longing for a real-life storybook hero to claim as her own. But when a husband-hunting debacle leaves her humiliated, she interviews for a staid governess position on a central Texas sheep ranch and vows to leave her romantic yearnings behind. When Gideon Westcott left his privileged life in England to make a name for himself in America's wool industry, he never expected to become a father overnight. And five-year-old Isabella hasn't uttered a word since she lost her mother. The unconventionality of the new governess concerns Gideon--and intrigues him at the same time. But he can't afford distractions. He has a ranch to run, a shearing to oversee, and a suspicious fence-cutting to investigate. When Isabella's uncle comes to claim the child--and her inheritance--Gideon and Adelaide must work together to protect Isabella from the man's evil schemes. And soon neither can deny their growing attraction. But after so many heartbreaks, will Adelaide be willing to get her head out of the clouds and put her heart on the line? </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Innovative, startlingly perceptive and aglow with colour, these fifteen stories were written towards the end of Katherine Mansfield's tragically short life. Many are set in the author's native New Zealand, others in England and the French Riviera. All are revelations of the unspoken, half-understood emotions that make up everyday experience - from the blackly comic "The Daughters of the Late Colonel", and the short, sharp sketch "Miss Brill", in which a lonely woman's precarious sense of self is brutally destroyed, to the vivid impressionistic evocation of family life in "At the Bay". 'All that I write,' Mansfield said, 'all that I am - is on the borders of the sea. It is a kind of playing.' </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Born in New Zealand in 1888, Kathering Mansfield Beauchamp was primarily a writer of short stories. She published Prelude and The Garden Party and Other Stories before her premature death from TB in 1923. One more book (Something Childish) and her journal and letters were published posthumously. </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>The frigid winter months are mighty slow in the PI biz for Julie Collins and her partner, Kevin Wells—until the duo is hired by a young woman to investigate problems at her grandfather’s assisted living facility, where they encounter lax security, unqualified healthcare personnel, and a shady senior volunteer organization. </p><p>Julie barely has time to delve deeper into the puzzling case before she reluctantly finds herself in an isolated cattle shelter on the Collins ranch with her father during a raging blizzard. There is no escape from her father or from the biting cold and bitter memories. <br />A missing hired ranch hand found dead on the ranch only complicates matters further. In trying to uncover the truth about the man'’s death, Julie is forced to wrestle with issues that make her question old wounds and new family loyalties. </p><p>Kevin'’s reckless involvement with their new client tests the bounds of professionalism, and Julie’'s relationship with Tony Martinez is strained, as he deals with power struggles within the Hombres organization, putting them both in jeopardy. </p><p>When the bodies and the snow pile up, Julie seems at odds with everyone, leaving her to wonder if she’s being blinded to the cold, hard truths in her life by love . . . or by hate.</p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>Lori G. Armstrong</strong> is the author of <em>Blood Ties</em>, <em>Hallowed Ground</em>, and <em>Shallow Grave. </em>She lives in Rapid City, South Dakota.  </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>From the mellifluous voice of a venerable American icon comes her first original collection of writing to be published in ten years, anecdotal vignettes drawn from a compelling life and written in Angelou's erudite prose. Beginning with her childhood, Angelou acknowledges her own inauguration into daughterhood in "Philanthropy," recalling the first time her mother called her "my daughter." Angelou becomes a mother herself at an early age, after a meaningless first sexual experience: "Nine months later I had a beautiful baby boy. The birth of my son caused me to develop enough courage to invent my life." Fearlessly sharing amusing, if somewhat embarrassing, moments in "Senegal," the mature Angelou is cosmopolitan but still capable of making a mistake: invited to a dinner party while visiting the African nation, Angelou becomes irritated that none of the guests will step on a lovely carpet laid out in the center of the room, so she takes it upon herself to cross the carpet, only to discover the carpet is a table cloth that had been laid out in honor of her visit. The wisdom in this slight volume feels light and familiar, but it's also earnest and offered with warmth. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“It’s a book to give to one’s daughter, mother, son or father, but definitely one to be read and savored.”—_Baltimore Sun  </p><p><em>“Sound advice, vivid memory and strong opinion . . . What is clear is that [Maya] Angelou is, all these years later, still a charmer, still speaking her mind.”—</em>Washington Post Book World  </p><p><em>“A slim volume packed with nourishing nuggets of wisdom . . . Overarching each brief chapter is the vital energy of a woman taking life’s measure with every step.”—</em>Kirkus Reviews<br />_<br />“Written in Angelou’s beautiful, poetic style, the essays feel like warm advice from a beloved aunt or grandmother, whose wisdom you know was earned.”—_Fredericksburg Free Lance_—Star  </p><p>“Spellbinding . . . Angelou delivers with her signature passion and fire. . . . Each [essay] delivers a powerful message.”—_Rocky Mountain News  </p><p>_  </p><p><em>From the Trade Paperback edition.</em></p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>British author Hogg's elaborate debut centers on the hunt for self-destructive rock star Billy K, who vanished into thin air on a Cornish cliff top. After a year of fruitless searching, Insp. James Dent, a rogue London policeman, isn't giving up. The last known clue about Billy K is that he was reading <em>Show Me the Sky</em>, the journal of a 19th-century missionary, Nelson Babbage of Whitechapel, London (formerly Naqarase Baba of Lakemba, Fiji). Taking a new approach to the case, Dent travels first to Australia, then to Kenya and finally back to London in his quest to find the missing singer. Extracts from <em>Show Me the Sky</em>, which chronicle Babbage/Naqarase's return to his homeland with a group of English missionaries, stand out as the most compelling of the various narrative strands, some of which are slow to develop. His vivid adventures at sea will remind many of Poe's <em>The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket</em>. <em>(Apr.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>This ambitious first novel by British writer Hogg moves back and forth in time and across several continents, offering multiple narrative strands and characters. The novel’s central arc follows Detective James Dent, who has spent the last year on the hunt for missing British rock star Billy K. Obsessed with the case, Dent abandons his job to track a final, desperate lead in Australia. Intercut with the hunt are passages from a journal Billy K was reading when he was last spotted. It contains the writing of nineteenth-century Fijian missionary Nelson Babbage, whose vivid rendering of colonial oppression forms the backbone of Hogg’s themes of identity and assimilation. Other narrative strands follow motorcycle rider Cal and the touching letters he pens to his girlfriend while slowly dying in the Australian Outback, and an exhausted teenage runaway who appears to be the teenage incarnation of Detective Dent. There is so much going on plotwise that the story never quite gels, yet its hybrid nature—it’s part thriller, part historical novel—and confident writing make for an intriguing read. --Joanne Wilkinson </p>

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Enter the spellbinding world of dragons . . . and those who tend them One of the most gifted fantasy authors writing today, New York Times bestselling author Robin Hobb has dazzled readers with brilliantly imaginative, emotionally resonant, and compulsively readable tales set in far-flung realms not unlike our own. In this enthralling new novel, she returns to the territory of her beloved Liveship Traders and Tawny Man trilogies with a story of dragons and humans, return and rebirth, and the search for meaning, belonging, and home. For years, the Trader cities valiantly battled their enemies, the Chalcedeans. But they could not have staved off invasion without the powerful dragon Tintaglia. In return, the Traders promised to help her serpents migrate up the Rain Wild River after a long exile at sea—to find a safe haven and, Tintaglia hopes, to restore her species. But too much time has passed, and the newly hatched dragons are damaged and weak, and many die. The few who survive cannot use their wings; earthbound, they are powerless to hunt and vulnerable to human predators willing to kill them for the fabled healing powers of dragon flesh. But Tintaglia has vanished and the Traders are weary of the labor and expense of tending useless dragons. The Trader leadership fears that if it stops providing for the young dragons, the hungry and neglected creatures will rampage—or die along the river's acidic muddy banks. To avert catastrophe, the dragons decree a move even farther up the treacherous river to Kelsingra, their ancient, mythical homeland whose mysterious location is locked deep within the dragons' uncertain ancestral memories. To ensure their safe passage, the Traders recruit a disparate group of young people to care for the damaged creatures and escort them to their new home. Among them is Thymara, an unschooled forest girl of sixteen, and Alise, a wealthy Trader's wife trapped in a loveless marriage, who attaches herself to the expedition as a dragon expert. The two women share a deep kinship with the dragons: Thymara can instinctively communicate with them, and Alise, captivated by their beauty and majesty, has devoted her life to studying them. Embarking on an arduous journey that holds no promise of return, the band of humans and dragons must make their way along the toxic and inhospitable Rain Wild River—an extraordinary odyssey that will teach them lessons about themselves and one another, as they experience hardships, betrayals, and joys beyond their wildest dreams.


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<div><h3>From</h3><p>A scholar of Vichy France, Paxton focuses here on the literature about fascism. The term is used with abandon in contemporary political discourse, reflecting scholarly disagreement about how to define it. His historical source material predominantly emanates from Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany, an obvious but necessary observation since the "fascist" status of other authoritarian regimes is contentious. Paxton does integrate biographies of the two ur-fascists into his dissection, but he comments frequently that a researcher's fixation on the leader obscures rather than clarifies the rise of his party, as does a propensity to focus on the party's ideology instead of its actions, and he follows the significantly different trajectories of radicalism taken by the Fascists and the Nazis. Formulating a five-stage life cycle of fascism from birth in "mobilizing passions" provoked by World War I to its destructiveness in power, Paxton wants his intricate but readable work to "rescue the concept [of fascism] for meaningful use," a laudable goal largely achieved. <em>Gilbert Taylor</em><br><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p><h3>Review</h3><p>"So fair, so thorough and, in the end, so convincing, it may well become the most authoritative . . . study of the subject. . . . A splendid book." <em>–The New York Times Book Review</em>  </p><p>"Useful and timely. . . . Mussolini and Hitler were the prototypical fascist leaders, and Paxton chronicles their rise to power--and their global influence and ultimate fall--with a brilliant economy." –_San Francisco Chronicle_  </p><p>"A deeply intelligent and very readable book. . . . Historical analysis at its best." –_The Economist  </p><p><em>“[A] helpful contribution, thoughtfully mapping out the descent of a civilized people — first the Italians, then the Germans — into a primal state (and state of being) ruled by mythology, symbol and emotion. . . . Serves as a reminder of our power and responsibility.” –</em>The Washington Post Book World_  </p><p>“Until now there has been no satisfying account of fascism that includes a convincing diagnostic kit for identifying its symptoms. . . . Robert Paxton steps in to restore sanity, with his view that fascism is not what was believed but what was done.” –_Los Angeles Times Book Review_</p>

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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>One measure, perhaps, of a book's worth, is its intergenerational pliancy: do new readers acquire it and interpret it afresh down through the ages? The <em>Meditations</em> of Marcus Aurelius, translated and introduced by Gregory Hays, by that standard, is very worthwhile, indeed. Hays suggests that its most recent incarnation--as a self-help book--is not only valid, but may be close to the author's intent. The book, which Hays calls, fondly, a "haphazard set of notes," is indicative of the role of philosophy among the ancients in that it is "expected to provide a 'design for living.'" And it does, both aphoristically ("Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly.") and rhetorically ("What is it in ourselves that we should prize?"). Whether these, and other entries ("Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life.") sound life-changing or like entries in a teenager's diary is up to the individual reader, as it should be. Hays's introduction, which sketches the life of Marcus Aurelius (emperor of Rome A.D. 161-180) as well as the basic tenets of stoicism, is accessible and jaunty. <em>--H. O'Billovich</em></p><h3>Review</h3><p>?The emperor Marcus Aurelius, the proverbial philosopher-king, produced in Greek a Roman manual of piety, the Meditations, whose impact has been felt for ages since. Here, for our age, is his great work presented in its entirety, strongly introduced and freshly, elegantly translated by Gregory Hays for the Modern Library.?<br>?Robert Fagles -- <em>Review</em></p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>The Thin Man</em>, Dashiell Hammett's classic tale of murder in Manhattan, became the popular </p><p>Nick and Nora Charles, accompanied by their schnauzer, Asta, are lounging in their suite at the Normandie in New York City for the Christmas holiday, enjoying the prerogatives of wealth: meals delivered at any hour, theater openings, taxi rides at dawn, rubbing elbows with the gangster element in speakeasies. They should be annoyingly affected, but they charm. Mad about each other, sardonic, observant, kind to those in need, and cool in a fight, Nick and Nora are graceful together, and their home life provides a sanctuary from the rough world of gangsters, hoodlums, and police investigations into which Nick is immediately plunged. </p><p>A lawyer-friend asks Nick to help find a killer and reintroduces him to the family of Richard Wynant, a more-than-eccentric inventor who disappeared from society 10 years before. His former wife, the lush and manipulative Mimi, has remarried a European fortune hunter who turns out to be a vindictive former associate of her first husband and is bent on the ruin of Wynant's family fortune. Wynant's children, Dorothy and Gilbert, seem to have inherited the family aversion to straight talk. Dorothy, who has matured into a beautiful young woman, has a crush on Nick, and so, in a hero-worshipping way, does mama's boy Gilbert. Nick and Nora respond kindly to their neediness as Nick tries to make sense of misinformation, false identities, far-fetched alibis, and, at the center of the confusion, the mystery of <em>The Thin Man</em>, Richard Wynant. Is he mad? Is he a killer? Or is he really an eccentric inventor protecting his discovery from intellectual theft? </p><p>The dialogue is spare, the locales lively, and Nick, the narrator, shows us the players as they are, while giving away little of his own thoughts. No one is telling the whole truth, but Nick remains mostly patient as he doggedly tries to backtrack the lies. Hammett's New York is a cross between Damon Runyon and Scott Fitzgerald--more glamorous than real, but compelling when visited in the company of these two charmers. The lives of the rich and famous don't get any better than this! <em>--Barbara Schlieper</em></p><h3>Review</h3><p>'The exuberance of language, the relish with which seediness is described .. it's a pleasure to imagine Hammett cutting loose with whatever rascally high jinks he could cook up' Margaret Atwood 'The ace performer' Raymond Chandler </p>


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<div><h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> In a wide-ranging intellectual career, Michel de Montaigne found no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well. By casting her biography of the writer as 20 chapters, each focused on a different answer to the question How to live? Bakewell limns Montaigne’s ceaseless pursuit of this most elusive knowledge. Embedded in the 20 life-knowledge responses, readers will find essential facts—when and where Montaigne was born, how and whom he married, how he became mayor of Bordeaux, how he managed a public life in a time of lethal religious and political passions. But Bakewell keeps the focus on the inner evolution of the acute mind informing Montaigne’s charmingly digressive and tolerantly skeptical essays. Flexible and curious, this was a mind at home contemplating the morality of cannibals, the meaning of his own near-death experience, and the puzzlingly human behavior of animals. And though Montaigne has identified his own personality as his overarching topic, Bakewell marvels at the way Montaigne’s prose has enchanted diverse readers—Hazlitt and Sterne, Woolf and Gide—with their own reflections. Because Montaigne’s capacious mirror still captivates many, this insightful life study will win high praise from both scholars and general readers. --Bryce Christensen </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“This charming biography shuffles incidents from Montaigne’s life and essays into twenty thematic chapters…Bakewell clearly relishes the anthropological anecdotes that enliven Montaigne’s work, but she handles equally well both his philosophical influences and the readers and interpreters who have guided the reception of the essays.” —_The New Yorker  </p><p><em>“Serious, engaging, and so infectiously in love with its subject that I found myself racing to finish so I could start rereading the Essays themselves…It is hard to imagine a better introduction—or reintroduction—to Montaigne than Bakewell’s book.” —Lorin Stein, </em>Harper’s Magazine  </p><p>_“Ms. Bakewell’s new book, <em>How to Live</em>, is a biography, but in the form of a delightful conversation across the centuries.” —_The New York Times  </p><p><em>“So artful is Bakewell’s account of [Montaigne] that even skeptical readers may well come to share her admiration.” </em>—The New York Times Book Review<br> _<br>“Extraordinary…a miracle of complex, revelatory organization, for as Bakewell moves along she provides a brilliant demonstration of the alchemy of historical viewpoint.” —_Boston Globe  </p><p>_“Well, <em>How to Live</em> is a superb book, original, engaging, thorough, ambitious, and wise.” —Nick Hornby, in the November/December 2010 issue of The _Believer  </p><p>_“In <em>How to Live</em>, an affectionate introduction to the author, Bakewell argues that, far from being a dusty old philosopher, Montaigne has never been more relevant—a 16th-century blogger, as she would have it—and so must be read, quite simply, ‘in order to live’…Bakewell is a wry and intelligent guide.” —_The Daily Beast <br>_<br>“Witty, unorthodox…_How to Live_ is a history of ideas told entirely on the ground, never divorced from the people thinking them. It hews close to Montaigne’s own preoccupations, especially his playful uncertainty – Bakewell is a stickler for what we can’t know. …_How to Live <em>is a delight…” —</em>The Plain Dealer<br>_<br>“This book will have new readers excited to be acquainted to Montaigne’s life and ideas, and may even stir their curiosity to read more about the ancient Greek philosophers who influenced his writing. <em>How to Live</em> is a great companion to Montaigne’s essays, and even a great stand-alone.” —_San Francisco Book Review_  </p><p>“A bright, genial, and generous introduction to the master’s methods.” _—Kirkus Reviews  </p><p><em>“[Bakewell reveals] one of literature's enduring figures as an idiosyncratic, humane, and surprisingly modern force.” —</em>Publisher’s Weekly (starred)_  </p><p>“As described by Sarah Bakewell in her suavely enlightening <em>How to Live, or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer</em> Montaigne is, with Walt Whitman, among the most congenial of literary giants, inclined to shrug over the inevitability of human failings and the last man to accuse anyone of self-absorption. His great subject, after all, was himself.” —Laura Miller, Salon.com  </p><p>“Lively and fascinating . . . <em>How To Live</em> takes its place as the most enjoyable introduction to Montaigne in the English language.” _—The Times Literary Supplement  </p><p><em>“Splendidly conceived and exquisitely written . . . enormously absorbing.” </em>—Sunday Times  </p><p><em>“</em>How to Live_ will delight and illuminate.”_ —The Independent  </p><p><em>“It is ultimately [Montaigne’s] life-loving vivacity that Bakewell succeeds in communicating to her readers.” </em>—The Observer   </p><p><em>“This subtle and surprising book manages the trick of conversing in a frank and friendly manner with its centuries-old literary giant, as with a contemporary, while helpfully placing Montaigne in a historical context.  The affection of the author for her subject is palpable and infectious.” —Phillip Lopate, author of </em>The Art of the Personal Essay  </p><p><em>“An intellectually lively treatment of a Renaissance giant and his world.” </em>—Saturday Telegraph  </p><p>_“Like recent books on Proust, Joyce, and Austen, <em>How to Live</em> skillfully plucks a life-guide from the incessant flux of Montaigne’s prose . . . A superb, spirited introduction to the master.” _—The Guardian  </p><p>_</p>

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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written—that is, ecstatically. (_John Updike_ ) </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>The classic novel from the author of <em>Lolita</em>, brilliantly portraying one man's ruin through love and betrayal.</strong> <em>"Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster."</em> Thus begins Vladimir Nabokov's <em>Laughter in the Dark</em>; this, the author tells us, is the whole story—except that he starts from here, with his characteristic dazzling skill and irony, and brilliantly turns a fable into a chilling, original novel of folly and destruction. Amidst a Weimar-era milieu of silent film stars, artists, and aspirants, Nabokov creates a merciless masterpiece as Albinus, an aging critic, falls prey to his own desires, to his teenage mistress, and to Axel Rex, the scheming rival for her affections who finds his greatest joy in the downfall of others.  </p><p>Published first in Russian as <em>Kamera Obskura</em> in 1932, this book appeared in Nabokov's own English translation six years later. This New Directions edition, based on the text as Nabokov revised it in 1960, features a new introduction by Booker Prize-winner John Banville. </p>

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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>The definitive history of water resources in the American West, and a very illuminating lesson in the political economy of limited resources anywhere. Highly recommended! </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In this stunning work of history and investigative journalism, Reisner tells the story of conflicts over water policy in the West and the resulting damage to the land, wildlife and Indians. PW stated that this "timely and important book should be required reading for all citizens." <br>Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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"A writer of boundless confidence and bold scientific extrapolation" (New York Times) concludes his mindbending trilogy. Webmind-the vast consciousness that spontaneously emerged from the infrastructure of the World Wide Web-has proven its worth to humanity by aiding in everything from curing cancer to easing international tensions. But the brass at the Pentagon see Webmind as a threat that needs to be eliminated. Caitlin Decter-the once-blind sixteen-year-old math genius who discovered, and bonded with, Webmind-wants desperately to protect her friend. And if she doesn't act, everything-Webmind included-may come crashing down.


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett's archetypally tough San Francisco detective, is more <em>noir</em> than __ and more vulnerable than Raymond Chandler's Marlowe. In <em>The Maltese Falcon</em>, the best known of Hammett's Sam Spade novels (including <strong> and </strong>), Spade is tough enough to bluff the toughest thugs and hold off the police, risking his reputation when a beautiful woman begs for his help, while knowing that betrayal may deal him a new hand in the next moment.</p><p>Spade's partner is murdered on a stakeout; the cops blame him for the killing; a beautiful redhead with a heartbreaking story appears and disappears; grotesque villains demand a payoff he can't provide; and everyone wants a fabulously valuable gold statuette of a falcon, created as tribute for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. Who has it? And what will it take to get it back? Spade's solution is as complicated as the motives of the seekers assembled in his hotel room, but the truth can be a cold comfort indeed.</p><p>Spade is bigger (and blonder) in the book than in the <strong>, and his Mephistophelean countenance is by turns seductive and volcanic. Sam knows how to fight, whom to call, how to rifle drawers and secrets without leaving a trace, and just the right way to call a woman "Angel" and convince her that she is. He is the quintessence of intelligent cool, with a wise guy's perfect pitch. If you only know the movie, read the book. If you're riveted by </strong> or wonder where Robert B. Parker's Spenser gets his comebacks, read the master. <em>--Barbara Schlieper</em></p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Dashiell Hammett. . . is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer." --<strong>The Boston Globe</strong>  </p><p>"<strong>The Maltese Falcon</strong> is not only probably the best detective story we have ever read, it is an exceedingly well written novel."--<strong>The Times Literary Supplement</strong> (London)  </p><p>"Hammett's prose [is] clean and entirely unique.  His characters [are] as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction."--<strong>The New York Times</strong> -- <em>Review</em></p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>According to author Loren Cordain, modern health and diet problems didn't start with the advent of packaged snack food, but much earlier--back at the dawn of the agricultural age many thousands of years ago. As humans became less nomadic and more dependent on high-carbohydrate diets, we left behind the diet we had evolved with, which is based on low-fat proteins and plenty of fruits and vegetables. Sugars, fats, and carbs were rare, if they were present at all, and survival required a steady, if low-key, level of activity. </p><p>Cordain's book <em>The Paleo Diet</em> blends medical research with a healthy sprinkle of individual anecdotes, practical tips, and recipes designed to make his suggestions into a sustainable lifestyle, rather than a simple month-long diet; he even includes cooking recommendations and nationwide sources for wild game. </p><p>Claims of improving diseases from diabetes to acne to polycystic ovary disease may be a little overstated, but in general the advice seems sound. Can any of us really go wrong by adding lots more vegetables and fruits to our daily regimen? One recommendation on safe tanning with a gradual reduction in sunscreen is surprising and not much detail is provided for safety issues that can accompany increased sun exposure. Still, Cordain's assertions have helped many people, and could provide exactly the changes you've been looking for to improve your health. <em>--Jill Lightner</em></p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Like Ray Audette's Neanderthin (St. Martin's, 1999), this is another "if you can't find it in the wild, don't eat it" diet that takes the germ of a useful idea and runs with it. According to Cordain (health and exercise science, Colorado State Univ.), Paleolithic humans were fit and lean because, as hunter-gatherers, they ate what was available: meats low in saturated fats, fresh fruits, and nonstarchy vegetables. Nor did they suffer from heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, the byproducts of our poor eating habits and lack of exercise. Then again, the average Paleolithic life span was about 30 years, not long enough to develop most chronic illnesses. Still, the author asserts that by eliminating grains, dairy, refined sugars, and processed foods from our diets, we, too, can thrive as our ancestors did. Three levels of diet and six weeks of sample menus, with recipes, are included.</p><p>Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.</p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Asserting that "modern life causes diabetes, autoimmunity, cancer, neurodegeneration, and infertility," the first-time author Wolf, a former student of The Paleo Diet's Lauren Cordain, takes on grains, carbs, vegetarians, misinformation, and other aspects of modern life with a casual, conversational tone ("Keep your poop where it belongs") that makes even topics like the components of total cholesterol engaging. Wolf's scientific background allows him to fully explain hormones, fats, and the digestive process, and helps him put the fundamentals of evolutionary biology into accessible context. He argues that, in addition to dietary changes, a focus on the quality and duration of sleep and a fitness routine is needed, and photographs accompanied by detailed instructions guide readers through simple exercises. Recognizing the time crunch of modern life, Wolf's program is created to require minimum time and expense. While a grain-free, dairy-free diet may sound difficult to implement, he suggests a commitment-light 30-day trial and provides a four-week menu with simple recipes like Slow Cooker Pork Loin, Chicken Alfredo, and Pizza with a nut-based crust. An extensive list of references, primarily from peer-reviewed journals, lends credence to an intriguing argument. <br>(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"I am a firm believer in <em>The Paleo Solution</em>. I maintain a hectic schedule that starts early and finishes late. Filming a television series, maintaining my fitness, and being a mom can be harrowing some days. Since adopting a Paleo way of eating I look and feel better, and I know that I am setting a good example for my daughter."—Eva La Rue, star of 'CSI: Miami'  </p><p>"I've watched as <em>The Paleo Solution</em> healed people after medical professionals had given up. Whether you're an athlete, or simply uninterested in becoming a health care statistic—there are no more excuses! Now you will finally look, feel, and perform as well as your genes will allow. Robb Wolf changed my life, and heÆs about to change yours too."—Kyle Maynard, author of <em>No Excuses</em> and 2004 ESPY Award winner</p><p>"Robb Wolf and <em>The Paleo Solution</em> have changed the way I look at diet and nutrition. He's helped me understand just how critical diet and sleep can be to your overall health and life."—Forrest Griffin, former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion and author of the bestselling <em>Got Fight?</em>  </p><p>"They say the worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it. <em>The Paleo Solution</em>'s value is far reaching for the knowledge that it offers. Robb has taken a unique approach to health and lifestyle that will help countless people."—John Welbourn, 10-Year NFL Veteran</p>

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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>The final curtain is closing on the Second World War, and Hana, a nurse, stays behind in an abandoned Italian villa to tend to her only remaining ward. Rescued by Bedouins from a burning plane, he is her English patient, anonymous, damaged beyond recognition and haunted by his memories of passion and betrayal. The only clue Hana has to his past is the one thing he clung on to through the fire - a copy of Herodotus, covered with hand-written notes describing a painful and ultimately tragic love affair.</p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>From the celebrated author of The English Patient and Anil's Ghost comes a remarkable and intimate novel of lives that intersect across continents and time. In the 1970s in Northern California, a father and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work their farm with the help of Coop, an enigmatic young man who makes his home with them. Their makeshift family is shattered by an incident of violence that sets fire to the rest of their lives. Divisadero takes us from San Francisco to the raucous backrooms of Nevada's casinos and eventually to the landscape of southern France. As the narrative moves back and forth through time and place, we find each of the characters trying to find some foothold in a present shadowed by the past. Description in Spanish: En la mas intima y hermosa de sus historias, Michael Ondaatje narra la vida de Anna, quien tras un brutal suceso acontecido en su hogar, tendra que dejar atras la vida en la granja de California y empezar un nuevo camino en el sur de Francia. Lejos de su padre, de su gemela Claire y de Coop un misterioso muchacho acogido por la familia encontrara en la literatura y en la reconstruccion de la biografia de un importante escritor la manera de conciliarse con su pasado. Una novela de vidas cruzadas que se extiende por dos continentes y a lo largo de un siglo. Tras El paciente ingles, Ondaatje demuestra su extraordinaria capacidad para moverse en el dificil terreno de los sentimientos y para tratar las pasiones, las perdidas y la persistencia del pasado, asi como las exigencias de la familia, del amor y de los recuerdos. Un relato de inusual intensidad y belleza capaz de emocionarnos y dejarnos sin respiro. </p>

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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Gathered in chronological order from 1974 to 1986, these early stories elucidate tension, suspicion, and the uneasy truces between married and divorced couples. Women are in flux and a general malaise settles over the urban dwellers or small town transplants, with notable departures. Though readers may be tempted to regard Beattie's characters as emblematic of their time, even as uniquely "American" in their self-involved, luxurious problems, they have weathered well and transcend easy classification. Beattie has mastered the tango between intelligent, sometimes perplexed individuals, allowing gradual, believable erosions to stand in place of high drama. "The Cinderella Waltz" draws an empathetic triangulation between the narrator, her ex-husband, and his current partner; "Home to Marie" offers a cruel take on unfulfilled expectations. Taken in full, these stories are taut evocations of separation and resignation, even as they reveal tenderness, and the best of them portray love and hatred not as intense polarities, but as tempered forces with fine gradations. (Nov.) <br>(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>While all critics professed respect for Ann Beattie’s significant influence on the American short story, how they reviewed her <em>New Yorker </em>collection depended on how much they really liked her minimalist style—one often devoid of tone, emotion, and cultural signposts. The <em>San Francisco Chronicle</em> categorized reaction to her work in three ways: “masterful,” “resistant and chilly,” or perhaps “both.” Appreciation, it seems, is a matter of literary taste. Certainly, there’s much to admire, even if only rarely do the stories tie together neatly. The earlier ones, those that made Beattie’s name, are more spartan; the later ones more nuanced, though they bear similarities to their predecessors. Whether or not one embraces her style, few writers capture the American psyche like Beattie. </p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>Take a Look Inside <em>Of Thee I Sing</em></strong> <br />Click on the photos below to view the full spreads from the book. </p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 2–5—In characteristically measured prose, the 44th President introduces 13 American icons and heroes as exemplars of personal virtues, from Georgia O'Keeffe (creativity) and Jackie Robinson (courage) to Helen Keller (strength) and Cesar Chavez (inspiration). Though he includes Billie Holiday in his gallery (a gifted singer, but an iffy role model) along with a free translation of Chavez's <em>!Si se puede!</em> as "Yes, you can!" (which was his campaign slogan: the official UFW version is a more accurate but stiffer "Yes, it can be done!"), Obama offers general but cogent summations of why each figure merits admiration—Martin Luther King Jr., for instance, "taught us unyielding compassion," and Helen Keller, "never waiting for life to get easier," "gave others courage to face their challenges." Long's superb technical gifts and gentle sense of humor shine in the pictures. Posed nobly and, usually, hard at work in full-page scenes, each man or woman also appears as a willowy but recognizable child on the facing and following pages, joining a growing crowd of young observers gazing across the center stitching and exchanging symbolic tools of their various trades. Their ranks swelled with more children, these younger versions turn to face viewers on the penultimate spread, followed by a closing painting of the author walking with his daughters and a page of reasonably accurate historical notes. As well as offering thought-provoking choices and commentary, this stately outing leads naturally to Lynne Cheney's more populous <em>America: A Patriotic Primer</em> (S &amp; S, 2002) as first introductions to our country's great ones.—_John Peters, formerly at New York Public Library_ <br />(c) Copyright 2011.  Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In Berg's understated and promising fiction debut, a 12-year-old "army brat" comes to epitomize the quality that her father prizes: emotional durability. Narrator Katie lives on a Texas Army base with her 18-year-old sister and volatile father, an officer of unidentified rank. The girls' mother has died of cancer, although Katie never discusses how much time has passed since the loss. Accustomed to a military lifestyle, suspecting that her home will be only a temporary one, Katie leads a fairly ordinary existence. She and her best friend go swimming, talk about puberty and meet boys. When the inevitable happens and the family learns they're being transferred to Missouri, Katie tries to accept the impending change, but her sister, who can no longer tolerate her father's abuse, rebels. Direct, matter-of-fact sentences convey resilient Katie's point of view; the absence of a maternal figure is acutely felt, particularly in the vulnerable but violent father's frightening temper. Overall, however, this subdued tale of a troubled family is more modest than memorable, insinuating rather than fully examining its characters' motives. Author tour. <br />Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>YA-After her mother's death, Katie and her father move from their home on a Texas army base. Her sister Diane, 18, runs away with her boyfriend rather than spend any more time with her grieving, distant father. Katie, at 12, is just discovering her potential and working through relationships with friends, boys, her sister and, most especially, her father. Every once in a while, she and readers see the unresolved despair that contributes to his abusive spells. No one in this compelling story is completely right or wrong. Diane cannot see the man's pain or, if she does, cannot forgive him yet. He is seemingly uncaring and cruel, but, at moments, is also loving and concerned for his small family. At the end of this book, readers will feel that the girl and her father are going to make it. Katie is an endearing and persistent heroine, and Berg's prose borders on the poetic. This is an easy read, but its haunting images of coming of age are sure to remain with YAs.<br /><em>Susan H. Woodcock, Potomac Library, Woodbridge, VA</em><br />Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<p>Natalie and her sisters have known Tom and his family forever. They climbed trees together, scraped knees on the same pavements and, in taking shared steps towards adulthood, shaped bonds that would last a lifetime.<p>So when Natalie's long-term love walks out on her, Tom's is the much-needed shoulder she cries on. And Tom dreams up an ingenious way to dry her tears: a series of Alphabet Weekends - starting with A for Abseiling - to make her forget the heartache and, he hopes, to make her see what's been staring her in the face all these years. His genuine love for her.<p>But as they tumble from A to Z, their families and friends face broken hearts and tragedies of their own. Can the Alphabet Weekends unlock love in all its many and wonderful guises? And not just for Natalie and Tom, but for everyone they care about?


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Chabon teams up with the editors of Dave Eggers's McSweeney's magazine to create a fiction anthology with an innovative, simple concept: the stories are driven by adventurous plots and narrative action, in contrast to the current trend toward stories that are "plotless and sparkling with epiphanic dew," as Chabon writes in his introduction. The roster includes such heavyweights as Michael Crichton, Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, Nick Hornby and Harlan Ellison. As the retro title might suggest, the collection is heavy on sci-fi and detective stories, often updated with contemporary twists. Crichton offers a detective yarn called "Blood Doesn't Come Out," in which a disgruntled PI takes out his frustration on his wife in a cheeky spin on the domestic violence that punctuates the pulp fiction of Jim Thompson and James A. Cain. Hornby's contribution is an entertaining sci-fi story called "Otherwise Pandemonium," about a man who buys a VCR that fast-forwards into an apocalyptic future. In Rick Moody's "The Albertine Notes," a debilitating drug called Albertine wreaks havoc by sending users back in time to relive their memories. Dave Eggers's "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly" is a thoughtful story in which a woman climbs Kilimanjaro to bolster her self-confidence after experiencing a personal crisis, but proves oblivious to the deaths of three porters when the weather on the mountain turns ugly. Half a dozen or so stories are markedly slight, but overall this is a strong collection.<br>Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><em></em>A Vintage Contemporaries Original  </p><p>Includes:<br><em></em>Jim Shepard's "Tedford and the Megalodon"  </p><p>Glen David Gold's "The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter"  </p><p>Dan Chaon's "The Bees"  </p><p>Kelly Link's "Catskin"  </p><p>Elmore Leonard's "How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman"  </p><p>Carol Emshwiller's "The General"  </p><p>Neil Gaiman's "Closing Time"  </p><p>Nick Hornby's "Otherwise Pandemonium"  </p><p>Stephen King's "The Tale of Gray Dick"  </p><p>Michael Crichton's "Blood Doesn’t Come Out"  </p><p>Laurie King's "Weaving the Dark"  </p><p>Chris Offutt's "Chuck’s Bucket"  </p><p>Dave Eggers's "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly"  </p><p>Michael Moorcock's "The Case of the Nazi Canary"  </p><p>Aimee Bender's "The Case of the Salt and Pepper Shakers"  </p><p>Harlan Ellison's "Goodbye to All That"  </p><p>Karen Joy Fowler's "Private Grave 9"  </p><p>Rick Moody's "The Albertine Notes"  </p><p>Michael Chabon's "The Martian Agent, a Planetary Romance"  </p><p>Sherman Alexie's "Ghost Dance" </p>

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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. In the powerful 16th Troubleshooter title, Brockman (Infamous) masterfully weaves the stories of the four Gillman siblings into a single narrative that reaffirms the importance of family. Ben, the youngest, asks Danny and Eden to come to Las Vegas and rescue him from their stepfather. Ben befriends Neesha, a teen running away from years of imprisonment in a brothel, as Eden struggles to prove she's not as messed up as Danny thinks she is. Eden is also dodging her estranged husband, Izzy, who served in the Navy with Danny; he and Danny's fabulous girlfriend, Jennilyn, are rare voices of sanity as the Gillmans try to forget the past and learn to get along while saving Ben and Neesha from their pursuers. The slowly rekindled attraction between Izzy and Eden is steamy, and Jennilyn is a rock for Danny, giving romance fans two delightful relationships for the price of one. (Apr.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p><strong>Praise for </strong>_<strong>Breaking the Rules</strong>  </p><p><em>"In the powerful 16th Troubleshooter title, Brockman masterfully weaves the stories of the four Gillman siblings into a single narrative that reaffirms the importance of family." --</em>Publisher's Weekly, starred review  </p><p>_<strong>PRAISE FOR SUZANNE BROCKMANN</strong>  </p><p>“Brockmann strikes the perfect balance between white-knuckle suspense and richly emotional romance.”—_Chicago Tribune_  </p><p>“The reigning queen of military suspense.”—_USA Today_  </p><p>“Brockmann is an undisputed master at writing military and suspense fiction [with] action, danger and passion all rolled into one.”—Curled Up with a Good Book  </p><p>“Brockmann is a master of adventure, drama, passion and suspense.”—_The Tampa Tribune_  </p><p>“[Brockmann] brilliantly combines superbly crafted, realistically complex characters with white-knuckle plotting.”—_Booklist<br />_</p>


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<p>A boy has been crucified in Galway city. People are shocked; the broadsheets debate how the brutal death reflects the state of the nation; the Irish Church is scandalized. No further action is taken. Then the sister of the murdered boy is burned alive and <b>PI Jack Taylor</b> decides to take matters into his own hands. Taylor's investigations take him to old city haunts where he encounters ghosts – living and dead. But what he eventually finds surpasses even his darkest imaginings</p>


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>At once more human and more mythic than his Perelandra trilogy, Lewis's short novel of love, faith, and transformation (both good and ill) offers the reader much food for thought in a compact, impressively rich story. Less heavy-handedly Christian-allegorical than Narnia, <strong>Till We Have Faces</strong> gives us characters who remind us of people we know facing choices and difficulties we recognize. This deceptively simple book takes on new depth with each rereading. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>This tale of two princesses - one beautiful and one unattractive - and of the struggle between sacred and profane love is LewisÂ’s reworking of the myth of Cupid and Psyche and one of his most enduring works. </p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>Product Description</strong><br />In search of adventure, 29-year-old Conor Grennan traded his day job for a year-long trip around the globe, a journey that began with a three-month stint volunteering at the Little Princes Children’s Home, an orphanage in war-torn Nepal.  </p><p>Conor was initially reluctant to volunteer, unsure whether he had the proper skill, or enough passion, to get involved in a developing country in the middle of a civil war. But he was soon overcome by the herd of rambunctious, resilient children who would challenge and reward him in a way that he had never imagined. When Conor learned the unthinkable truth about their situation, he was stunned: The children were not orphans at all. Child traffickers were promising families in remote villages to protect their children from the civil war—for a huge fee—by taking them to safety. They would then abandon the children far from home, in the chaos of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu.</p><p>For Conor, what began as a footloose adventure becomes a commitment to reunite the children he had grown to love with their families, but this would be no small task. He would risk his life on a journey through the legendary mountains of Nepal, facing the dangers of a bloody civil war and a debilitating injury. Waiting for Conor back in Kathmandu, and hopeful he would make it out before being trapped in by snow, was the woman who would eventually become his wife and share his life’s work.</p><p><em>Little Princes</em> is a true story of families and children, and what one person is capable of when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. At turns tragic, joyful, and hilarious, <em>Little Princes</em> is a testament to the power of faith and the ability of love to carry us beyond our wildest expectations.   </p><hr /><p><strong>An Amazon Exclusive Essay by Conor Grennan </strong>   </p><p><strong> How Taking Notes and Living without Indoor Plumbing Would Change My Life</strong></p><p>When I was living in Nepal, I kept a notebook with me at all times. It was a small Nepali-made notebook—the brand name was Happy Days! or some such thing— and it made me smile every time I looked at it. I took it everywhere I went, and wrote in it often.</p><p>The children constantly asked me what I was writing, and I would tell them I was recording our conversations. That was true, but it was more than that. I was also recording everything I found strange in my new home. Like the fact that the kids chewed on chicken bones until they were practically dust, or that one of the boys, Santosh, had a digital watch which he’d borrowed from a friend that, along with displaying the hour, flashed “I Love You!” once per second.</p><p>There were times I was caught without my notebook, like in the middle of a soccer game when Dawa’s shot—destined for just inside the invisible right post—was blocked by the broadside of a cow, and I had to try to recall from memory the captivating debate over the role of livestock in team sports, and whether or not the goal should count. (It didn’t.)</p><p>Then, when the children would go to bed at 8 p.m., I would bundle up in two or three fleeces, a hat, and woolen gloves I had cut the fingers out of; I’d pull out my notebook and I’d sit down to write my travel blog, copying everything I had put into the notebook over the course of the day into an old, ultra-light Dell I’d bought off eBay for about 200 dollars. It was pretty much useless except as a word processor, but it was the most precious thing I owned. Over the next three years, traveling the globe and living in Nepal, I would end up typing just over half-a-million words on that little workhorse—five times the length of <em>Little Princes</em>.</p><p>It turned out that writing everything down in the moment was critical because the more time I spent in Nepal, the more normal these “strange” things became. It became normal to watch my blankets being made from scratch on the ground outside my house, to trade broken flip-flops for potatoes, and to use outhouses on a daily basis without thinking twice about it. (Did you hear that, people? <em>Outhouses</em>!)</p><p>The funny thing is, with all that note-taking, I never had any intention of writing a book about my time in Nepal. It honestly never occurred to me that it was a much of a story until someone else mentioned the idea to me.</p><p>Once I started writing the book, however, I couldn’t stop. I went back to my old notebooks and I was suddenly in Nepal again, hearing in my mind exactly how Hriteek had laughed, or Nishal had protested, or Raju had squealed as he’d run through the house, bare feet padding against the cold cement floors.</p><p><em>Little Princes</em>, the book, allowed me to revisit that wonderful, difficult, challenging, happy time of my life. I still get back to Nepal, of course, and I still see the children. But they change, they grow up. Writing <em>Little Princes</em> allowed me to visit the children as they were. And also, as the person I was.</p><hr /><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Grennan, who once worked at the East West Institute in Prague, embarked on a round-the-world trip in 2006, starting with a stint volunteering for an orphanage six miles south of Kathmandu. The orphanage, called the Little Princes Children's Home, housed 18 children from the remote province of Humla, rescued from a notorious child trafficker who had bought the children from poor villagers terrified of the Maoist insurgents eager for new recruits; the parents hoped to keep their children safe, but the children often ended up as slaves. Grennan was stunned by the trauma endured by these children, who he grew to love over two months, and after completing his world tour, returned to the orphanage and vowed not only to locate seven Humla orphans who had vanished from a foster home, but also to find the parents of the children in the orphanage. This required starting up a nonprofit organization in America, Next Generation Nepal, raising funds, buying a house in Kathmandu for the children's home, and trekking into the mountains of Humla to locate the parents. Grennan's work is by turns self-pokingly humorous, exciting, and inspiring. (Feb.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>"In our high tech society, connecting with the Earth has never been morecritical to our health and well-being. This inspired and well-researched book explains the peils we face by being disconnected from the powe and energy of the Earth and its boundless storehouse of free electrons. Could much of disease, chronic inflammation, poor sleep and more be the result of this?A brillian hypothesis well-grounded in Science. Highly recommended." --Nicholas Perricone, M.D., author of "Ageless Face, Ageless Mind" --Direct comments from Dr. Perricone  </p><p>"Earthing ranks right up there with the discovery of penicillin. This book is probably the most important health read of the 21st centur" --Ann Louise Gittleman, Ph.D., C.N.S., author of "The Fat Flush Diet" --Direct comments from Dr. Gittleman  </p><p>"Earthing connects us to Nature and Nature is the ultimate source of health and healing. This book is a manual for one of Nture's great healing secrets." -John Gray, Ph.D., author of "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" --Direct comments from Dr. Gray </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>The solution for chronic inflammation, regarded as the cause of most common modern diseases, has been identified! And it is not blueberries. It is something right beneath our feet-the Earth itself!  </p><p>Throughout most of evolution humans walked barefoot and slept on the ground, largely oblivious that the surface of the Earth contains limitless healing energy. Science has discovered this energy as free-flowing electrons constantly replenished by solar radiation and lightning. Few people know it, but the ground provides a subtle electric signal that maintains health and governs the intricate mechanisms that make our bodies work-just like plugging a lamp into a power socket makes it light up. Modern lifestyle, including the widespread use of insulative rubber or plastic-soled shoes, has disconnected us from this energy and, of course, we no longer sleep on the ground as we did in times past.  </p><p><em>Earthing </em>introduces the planet's powerful, amazing, and overlooked natural healing energy and how people anywhere can readily connect to it. This eye-opening book describes how the physical disconnect with the Earth creates abnormal physiology and contributes to inflammation, pain, fatigue, stress, and poor sleep. By reconnecting to the Earth, symptoms are rapidly relieved and even eliminated and recovery from surgery, injury, and athletic overexertion is accelerated.  </p><p>This never-before-told story-filled with fascinating research and real-life testimonials- chronicles a discovery with the potential to create a global health revolution.  </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>A man with no nation will fight for a woman with no hope...   </p><p>Yakima Henry left his ranch in the White Mountains for supplies, and rode right into a bloody shootout between Saber Creek townsfolk and a gang of banditos who just robbed a stagecoach. But what really riles Yakima is the banditos making off with his prized stallion, Wolf, and a pretty saloon girl. </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>"Leslie spins a yarn that rivals the very best on western shelves today."<br />-J. Lee Butts, author of <em>Lawdog</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Yakima Henry ventures south of the border to save an old flame's brother from a Mexican prison-only to incur the wrath of deadly Apaches, scalp-hunting Rurales, and zealous revolutionaries... </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Lou Prophet is accompanying the vile outlaw Blanco Metalious back to Nugget Town to see him hang. Then Sam "Man Killin" Metalious enters the picture, determined to free his son. No way is that going to happen under Prophet's watch. </p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The languorous sequel to 2010's Oath of Fealty finds many characters moving up in the world, including Kieri Phelan, the king of Lyonya, and Dorrin, now Duke Verrakai. Now those newly stationed must deal with assassination attempts, counterfeiting, and a new enemy who has taken to calling himself Duke Visla Vaskronin. Kieri doesn't understand why his elven grandmother and co-ruler, the Lady, often refuses to come when he needs her, even when a war with the Pargunese and their possibly unbeatable weapon is imminent. He will also discover that his elven heritage runs stronger than he thought. The pace is slow enough to immerse readers in the world as the characters are immersed in self-discovery, with larger events impending but usually not seen directly. There's action a-plenty, but this series most appeals to readers who enjoy their fantasy more thoughtful and intellectual. (Mar.) <br>(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>'Moon's novels of Paksenarrion's world have been considered classics since they were first published more than two decades ago. Her storytelling is as electrifying as ever, and her readers should be delighted with this new vista of a well-known world' Booklist </p>

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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>MANHATTAN IS UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT. THEY'RE NOT FROM AROUND HERE. Welcome to the Big Apple, son. Welcome to the city that never sleeps: invaded by monstrous fusions of meat and machinery, defended by a private army that makes Blackwater look like the Red Cross, ravaged by a disfiguring plague that gifts its victims with religious rapture while it eats them alive. You've been thrown into this meat grinder without warning, without preparation, without a clue. Your whole squad was mowed down the moment they stepped onto the battlefield. And the chorus of voices whispering in your head keeps saying that all of this is on you: that you and you alone might be able to turn the whole thing around if you only knew what the hell was going on. You'd like to help. Really you would. But it's not just the aliens that are gunning for you. Your own kind hunts you as a traitor, and your job might be a bit easier if you didn't have the sneaking suspicion they could be right. . . .</p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Mrs. Pamela Evans lives a lonely new widowhood outside of Baltimore, with only a house full of ticking clocks for company. Then she hires eccentric Elizabeth Abbott as a handyman and both discover that parts don't have to be a perfect match to work.  </p><p>"Anne Tyler is a magical writer."  </p><p>LOS ANGELES TIMES  </p><p><em>From the Paperback edition.</em></p><h3>From the Inside Flap</h3><p>Mrs. Pamela Evans lives a lonely new widowhood outside of Baltimore, with only a house full of ticking clocks for company. Then she hires eccentric Elizabeth Abbott as a handyman and both discover that parts don't have to be a perfect match to work.  </p><p>"Anne Tyler is a magical writer."  </p><p>LOS ANGELES TIMES  </p><p><em>From the Paperback edition.</em></p>

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<h3>Review</h3><p>"What we lost when she died is bitter. What we have is astonishing: the stories burn brighter than ever, and strike deeper." --Walter Clemons, <em>Newsweek</em><br />-- <em>Review</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>Winner of the National Book Award</strong>  </p><p>The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's monumental contribution to American fiction. There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime--_Everything That Rises Must Converge _and <em>A Good Man Is Hard to Find</em>.   </p><p>O'Connor published her first story, "The Geranium," in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, "Judgement Day"--sent to her publisher shortly before her death—is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium." Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.  </p>


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Every morning H kan von Enke takes a walk in the forest near his apartment in Stockholm. However, one winter's day he fails to come home. It seems that the retired naval officer has vanished without trace. Detective Kurt Wallander is not officially involved in the investigation but he has personal reasons for his interest in the case as H kan's son is engaged to his daughter Linda. A few months earlier, at H kan's 75th birthday party, Kurt noticed that the old man appeared uneasy and seemed eager to talk about a controversial incident from his past career that remained shrouded in mystery. Could this be connected to his disappearance? When H kan's wife Louise also goes missing, Wallander is determined to uncover the truth. His search leads him down dark and unexpected avenues involving espionage, betrayal and new information about events during the Cold War that threatens to cause a political scandal on a scale unprecedented in Swedish history. The investigation also forces Kurt to look back over his own past and consider his hopes and regrets, as he comes to the unsettling realisation that even those we love the most can remain strangers to us. And then an even darker cloud appears on the horizon...The return of Kurt Wallander, for his final case, has already caused a sensation around the globe. The Troubled Man confirms Henning Mankell's position as the king of crime writing.


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When reporter Ellen Gleeson gets a ‘Have You Seen This Child?’ flyer in the mail, she almost throws it away. But something about it makes her look again, and her heart stops. The child in the photo looks exactly like her adopted son, Will. All her instincts tell her to deny the similarity between her son and the photo, for she knows his adoption was lawful. But she’s a journalist and can’t stop thinking about the image until she figures out the truth. Moreover, she can’t shake off the question - if Will rightfully belongs to someone else, should she keep him or give him up?As she investigates, uncovering clues no one was meant to discover, she digs too deep, endangering her own life - and that of the son she loves.


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Four upper-class Saudi Arabian women negotiate the clash between tradition and the encroaching West in this debut novel by 25-year-old Saudi Alsanea. Though timid by American chick lit standards, it was banned in Saudi Arabia for its scandalous portrayal of secular life. Framed as a series of e-mails sent to the e-subscribers of an Internet group, the story follows an unnamed narrator who recounts the misadventures of her best friends, Gamrah, Lamees, Michelle and Sadeem—all fashionable, educated, wealthy 20-somethings looking for true love. Their world is dominated by prayer, family loyalty and physical modesty, but the voracious consumption of luxury goods (designer name dropping is muted but present) and yearnings for female empowerment are also part of the package. Lines like the talk was as soft as the granules in my daily facial soap or Sadeem was feeling so sad that her chest was constricted in sorrow appear with woeful frequency, and the details about the roles of technology, beauty and Western pop culture in the lives of contemporary Saudi women aren't revelatory. Readers looking for quality Arabic fiction have much better options. <em>(July)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Four close girlfriends from upper-class Saudi families attend university and medical school in Riyadh and in Chicago and San Francisco. They talk in chat rooms, IM on their mobiles to their boyfriends and each other. But even with all the hip technology, they cannot escape deep-seated oppressive traditions after they return to Riyadh. Sadeem's fiancé dumps her after she has sex with him. Gamrah's husband divorces her after she discovers he is having an affair. Michelle and Faisal adore each other, but he gives her up when his family says so. The Religious Police arrest one couple in a coffee bar. But most families don't need official help to interfere in women's lives. Translated from the Arabic, this debut novel was immediately banned in Saudi Arabia. The 25-year-old Saudi writer (now studying in Chicago but planning to return home) tells it from the inside, complete with the contradictions and betrayals that define daily lfe. The Sex and the City–type drama is fast, wry, witty, and anguished. And so are the politics: "He appreciates her independence. But can't find his." Rochman, Hazel </p>

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To American soldiers in Vietnam, "back in the world" meant America and safety. To Tobias Wolff's characters, Back in the World is where lives that have veered out of control just might become normal again. Unfortunately, the men and women in these gripping, pungent, and wonderfully skewed stories have only the vaguest notion of what normal is. A gentle priest finds himself in a Vegas hotel with a hysterical, sun-burned stranger. A show-biz hopeful undergoes a dubious audition in a hearse speeding across the California desert. An aging soldier is distracted from a night of philandering by a gun-toting neighbor and a suicidal enlisted man. As he moves among these unfortunates, Wolff observes the disparity between their realities and their dreams, in ten stories of exhilarating lucidity and grace.Stories included are: "The Missing Person," "Say Yes," "The Poor Are Always With Us," "Sister," "Soldier's Joy," "Desert Breakdown," "Our Story Begins," "Leviathan," and "The Rich Brother." "Terrific...The magic of his fiction cannot be explained. It is the ancient art of the master storyteller."--Tim O'Brien


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<div><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 4-7–This first book in a new series is great fun, and readers will zip through it faster than a speeding bullet. Ordinary Boy lives in Superopolis, where he appears to be the only citizen with no superpowers at all. Of course O Boy's friends don't have an easy time themselves. His best friend, Stench, possesses mighty strength, but every time he uses it he emits a…well, he lives up to his name. Halogen Boy can glow brightly, but unfortunately he's far from the brightest bulb in the box. The greatest of them all is the Amazing Indestructo, and O Boy is his greatest fan. But a strange plot involving collector cards, million-dollar promotional contracts, and Indestructo's greatest adversary, Professor Brain-Drain, shake O Boy's faith in his hero–in a hilarious way. Along the way, readers who are paying attention will see that O Boy might not be so ordinary after all. Boniface wields a cynical, but definitely kid-friendly, sense of humor, and Gilpin's illustrations are sharp and witty. Kids who love comic books, superhero animations, and graphic novels will enjoy this story._–Walter Minkel, New York Public Library_ <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Gr. 3-5. Ordinary Boy is the only resident of Superopolis, a city of heroes, who doesn't have superpowers. He is part of the Junior Leaguers team that includes Halogen Boy, whose glowing ability depends on his consumption of apple juice; Plasma Girl, who can transform into a jellylike substance; and Stench, notable for passing overpowering gas. Ordinary Boy's personal hero is the Amazing Indestructo, the self-proclaimed greatest hero of Superopolis, who is the leader of the League of Ultimate Goodness. When the Junior Leaguers get the opportunity to help the Amazing Indestructo foil the sinister plans of villainous Professor Brain-Drain, Ordinary Boy realizes that even without superpowers, he can still do extraordinary things. Ordinary Boy's narrative is interspersed with pages from the <em>Li'l Heroes Handbook</em>, offering brief profiles on characters and places in the story. Fast-paced and silly, this first title in the Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy series will appeal to fans of Captain Underpants in search of new adventures. <em>Ed Sullivan</em><br><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>

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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>'Dump Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books and replace them with the Morganvilles' SFX Magazine </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>In the small college town of Morganville, vampires and humans lived in (relative) peace-until all the rules got rewritten when the evil vampire Bishop arrived, looking for the lost book of vampire secrets. He's kept a death grip on the town ever since. Now an underground resistance is brewing, and in order to contain it, Bishop must go to even greater lengths. He vows to obliterate the town and all its inhabitants-the living and the undead. Claire Danvers and her friends are the only ones who stand in his way. But even if they defeat Bishop, will the vampires ever be content to go back to the old rules, after having such a taste of power? </p>

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<h3>Review</h3><p>'Dump Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books and replace them with the Morganvilles' SFX Magazine 'Addictive and hypnotic' The Eternal Night </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Without the evil vampire Bishop ruling over the town of Morganville, the resident vampires have made major concessions to the human population. With their newfound freedoms, Claire Danvers and her friends are almost starting to feel comfortable again...   </p><p>Now Claire can actually concentrate on her studies, and her friend Eve joins the local theatre company. But when one of Eve's castmates goes missing after starting work on a short documentary, Eve suspects the worst. Claire and Eve soon realize that this film project, whose subject is the vampires themselves, is a whole lot bigger-and way more dangerous-than anyone suspected.   </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>'Dump Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books and replace them with the Morganvilles' SFX Magazine 'Addictive and hypnotic' The Eternal Night </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>A new chapter in the <em>New York Times</em> bestselling Morganville Vampires saga. </strong></p><p>Vampire musician Michael Glass has attracted the attention of a big- time producer who wants to cut a demo and play some gigs-which means Michael will have to enter the human world. For this, he's been assigned escorts that include both a dangerous immortal as well as Michael's all-too-human friends. And with that mix of personalities, this is going to be a road trip from hell... </p>


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From the time he was three or four years old, John Elder Robison realised that he was different from other people. He was unable to make eye contact or connect with other children, and by the time he was a teenager his odd habits an inclination to blurt out non-sequiturs, obsessively dismantle radios or dig five-foot holes (and stick his younger brother in them) had earned him the label 'social deviant'. It didn't help that his mother conversed with light fixtures and his father spent evenings pickling himself in sherry. Look Me in the Eye is his story of growing up with Asperger's syndrome at a time when the diagnosis simply didn't exist. Along the way it also tells the story of two brothers born eight years apart yet devoted to each other: the author and his younger brother Chris, who would grow up to become bestselling author Augusten Burroughs. This book is a rare fusion of inspiration, dark comedy and insight into the workings of the human mind. For someone who has struggled all his life to connect with other people, Robison proves to be an extraordinary storyteller.


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>There is a passage early in Augusten Burroughs's harrowing and highly entertaining memoir, <em>Running with Scissors</em>, that speaks volumes about the author. While going to the garbage dump with his father, young Augusten spots a chipped, glass-top coffee table that he longs to bring home. "I knew I could hide the chip by fanning a display of magazines on the surface, like in a doctor's office," he writes, "And it certainly wouldn't be dirty after I polished it with Windex for three hours." There were certainly numerous chips in the childhood Burroughs describes: an alcoholic father, an unstable mother who gives him up for adoption to her therapist, and an adolescence spent as part of the therapist's eccentric extended family, gobbling prescription meds and fooling around with both an old electroshock machine and a pedophile who lives in a shed out back. But just as he dreamed of doing with that old table, Burroughs employs a vigorous program of decoration and fervent polishing to a life that many would have simply thrown in a landfill. Despite her abandonment, he never gives up on his increasingly unbalanced mother. And rather than despair about his lot, he glamorizes it: planning a "beauty empire" and performing an a capella version of "You Light Up My Life" at a local mental ward. Burroughs's perspective achieves a crucial balance for a memoir: emotional but not self-involved, observant but not clinical, funny but not deliberately comic. And it's ultimately a feel-good story: as he steers through a challenging childhood, there's always a sense that Burroughs's survivor mentality will guide him through and that the coffee table will be salvaged after all. <em>--John Moe</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>"Bookman gave me attention. We would go for long walks and talk about all sorts of things. Like how awful the nuns were in his Catholic school when he was a kid and how you have to roll your lips over your teeth when you give a blowjob," writes Burroughs (Sellevision) about his affair, at age 13, with the 33-year-old son of his mother's psychiatrist. That his mother sent him to live with her shrink (who felt that the affair was good therapy for Burroughs) shows that this is not just another 1980s coming-of-age story. The son of a poet with a "wild mental imbalance" and a professor with a "pitch-black dark side," Burroughs is sent to live with Dr. Finch when his parents separate and his mother comes out as a lesbian. While life in the Finch household is often overwhelming (the doctor talks about masturbating to photos of Golda Meir while his wife rages about his adulterous behavior), Burroughs learns "your life [is] your own and no adult should be allowed to shape it for you." There are wonderful moments of paradoxical humor Burroughs, who accepts his homosexuality as a teen, rejects the squeaky-clean pop icon Anita Bryant because she was "tacky and classless" as well as some horrifying moments, as when one of Finch's daughters has a semi-breakdown and thinks that her cat has come back from the dead. Beautifully written with a finely tuned sense of style and wit the occasional clich‚ ("Life would be fabric-softener, tuna-salad-on-white, PTA-meeting normal") stands out anomalously this memoir of a nightmarish youth is both compulsively entertaining and tremendously provocative.<br />Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<div><h3>From</h3><p>Fourteen-year-old Roger has a peculiar gift that allows him to cross from the land of the living into the world of the dead—but only at the point of extreme personal pain. He finds himself at court in the capital city, and he quickly becomes a tool in the deadly contest of wills between a young queen some say is not fit to rule and her mother, who refuses to relinquish the throne. Kendall’s debut novel is an atmospheric coming-of-age tale that weaves ill-fated courtly love with Roger’s difficult journey to understand the world. The involving story is weakened just a little by unnecessary and oddly placed references to sexual arousal and characters that exhibit little overall growth. There are tantalizing references to a mysterious place known as Soulvine Moor, which receives short shrift when readers are finally taken there toward the novel’s end. Despite this, Kendall’s first effort will find fans who will cheer Roger on and hope for his constancy. Grades 8-11. --Cindy Welch </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"...an atmospheric depiction of her hero's journey and freshly imagined vision of the afterlife should resonate with gothic fantasy fans." --_Publishers Weekly_</p>

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Wherever he goes, the dreamseller enchants, stirs up trouble and inspires his listeners to search for the most important thing: the heart of the human soul. Every person he meets is someone who has abandoned their dreams and is struggling through life: a professor who has stopped pursuing his passions, an alcoholic who has no family, the elderly who have lost their zest for life. Through his questioning and wisdom, the dreamseller helps them to look into their silent hearts and get to the root of their unhappiness. The Dreamseller: The Calling is moving, entertaining and ultimately inspiring. This book will make you laugh and cry, but above all, it will make you reflect on the purpose of your life, value others and become empowered to believe in your dreams.


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>More than just a reading of Hornby's fourth novel, this audiobook is nearly an audio play with three excellent actors playing four characters. A famous pervert, an old maid, a crazy chick and a has-been rocker walk into a bar... well, they eventually do walk into a pub or two, but this disparate group of strangers first meet on a tower rooftop. Each of the quartet has independently decided to jump on New Year's Eve. Now, bonded by circumstance, they can't get rid of each other. Vance does a superb job rendering the glib tones of Martin, the TV anchor fallen from grace (he did jail time for having sex with a 15-year-old). His pompous but self-loathing delivery is dead on. Brick, with more than 150 audiobooks under his belt, perfectly nails the earnest voice and cockiness of J.J., the washed-up American rocker. And Kate Reading is outstanding playing both female characters. As Maureen, the older woman with no social life, she exudes quiet, naive dignity, but she really shines as Jess, the young wacko whose rudeness and rebellion are conveyed with a brash comical snap. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Adult/High School–Four different people find themselves on the same roof on New Year's Eve, but they have one thing in common–they're all there to jump to their deaths. A scandal-plagued talk-show host, a single mom of a disabled young man, a troubled teen, and an aging American musician soon unite in a common cause, to find out why Jess (the teen) can't get her ex-boyfriend to return her calls. Down the stairs they go, and thoughts of suicide gradually subside. It all sounds so high concept, but each strand of the plot draws readers into Hornby's web. The novel is so simply written that its depths don't come to full view until well into the reading. Each character takes a turn telling the story in a distinctive voice. Tough questions are asked–why do you want to kill yourself, and why didn't you do it? Are adults any smarter than adolescents? What defines friends and family? Characters are alternately sympathetic and utterly despicable, talk-show-host Martin, particularly. The narrators are occasionally unreliable, with the truth coming from the observers instead. Obviously, a book about suicide is a dark read, but this one is darkly humorous–as Hornby usually is. Teens will identify with or loathe Jess and musician J. J., but they will also find themselves in the shoes of Maureen and Martin. This somewhat philosophical work will appeal to Hornby's fans but has plenty to attract new audiences as well._–Jamie Watson, Harford County Public Library, MD_ <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Relates the fortunes of three adopted sisters who take dancing and stage training, one to become an actress, the second a ballerina, and the third an aviatrix.</p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>The second novel set in the Old Republic era and based on the massively multiplayer online game <em>Star Wars</em>®: The Old Republic™ ramps up the action and brings readers face-to-face for the first time with a Sith warrior to rival the most sinister of the Order’s Dark Lords—Darth Malgus, the mysterious, masked Sith of the wildly popular “Deceived” and “Hope” game trailers.  </p><p>Malgus brought down the Jedi Temple on Coruscant in a brutal assault that shocked the galaxy. But if war crowned him the darkest of Sith heroes, peace would transform him into something far more heinous—something Malgus would never want to be, but cannot stop, any more than he can stop the rogue Jedi fast approaching.  </p><p>Her name is Aryn Leneer—and the lone Knight that Malgus cut down in the fierce battle for the Jedi Temple was her Master. And now she’s going to find out what happened to him, even if it means breaking every rule in the book. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>Paul S. Kemp </strong>is the author of the <em>New York Times</em>_ <em>bestselling novel </em>Star Wars: Crosscurrent, <em>as well as nine Forgotten Realms</em> _fantasy novels and many short stories. When he’s not writing, he practices corporate law in Michigan, which has inspired him to write some really believable villains. He digs cigars, single malt scotch, and ales, and tries to hum the theme song to <em>Shaft</em> at least once per day. Paul Kemp lives and works in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, with his wife, twin sons, and a couple of cats. </p>

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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Although Colin Laney (from Gibson's earlier novel __) lives in a cardboard box, he has the power to change the world. Thanks to an experimental drug that he received during his youth, Colin can see "nodal points" in the vast streams of data that make up the worldwide computer network. Nodal points are rare but significant events in history that forever change society, even though they might not be recognizable as such when they occur. Colin isn't quite sure what's going to happen when society reaches this latest nodal point, but he knows it's going to be big. And he knows it's going to occur on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, which has been home to a sort of SoHo-esque shantytown since an earthquake rendered it structurally unsound to carry traffic.</p><p>Colin sends Barry Rydell (last seen in Gibson's novel __) to the bridge to find a mysterious killer who reveals himself only by his lack of presence on the Net. Barry is also entrusted with a strange package that seems to be the home of Rei Toi, the computer-generated "idol singer" who once tried to "marry" a human rock star (she's also from <em>Idoru</em>). Barry and Rei Toi are eventually joined by Barry's old girlfriend Chevette (from <em>Virtual Light</em>) and a young boy named Silencio who has an unnatural fascination with watches. Together this motley assortment of characters holds the key to stopping billionaire Cody Harwood from doing whatever it is that will make sure he still holds the reigns of power after the nodal point takes place.</p><p>Although <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em> includes characters from two of Gibson's earlier novels, it's not a direct sequel to either. It's a stand-alone book that is possibly Gibson's best solo work since __. In the past, Gibson has let his brilliant prose overwhelm what were often lackluster (or nonexistent) story lines, but this book has it all: a good story, electric writing, and a group of likable and believable characters who are out to save the world ... kind of. The ending is not quite as supercharged as the rest of the novel and so comes off a bit flat, but overall this is definitely a winner. <em>--Craig E. Engler</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Gibson is in fine form in his seventh novel, a fast-paced, pyrotechnic sequel to Idoru. In the early 21st century, the world has survived any number of millennial events, including major earthquakes in Tokyo and San Francisco, the expansion of the World Wide Web into virtual reality, a variety of killer new recreational drugs and the creation and later disappearance of the first true artificial intelligence, the rock superstar know as the Idoru. However, Colin Laney, with his uncanny ability to sift through media data and discern the importance of upcoming historical "nodes," has determined that even more world-shattering occurrences are in the offing. Letting his personal life fall apart, suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder related to his talent, Laney retreats to a cardboard box in a Tokyo subway station. There he uses his powers and an Internet connection to do everything he can to head off worldwide disaster. Contacting Berry Rydell, former rent-a-cop and would-be star of the TV show Cops in Trouble (and a character in two of Gibson's previous novels), Laney first maneuvers him into investigating a pair of murders committed by a man who is mysteriously invisible to the psychic's predictive powers, and then into recovering the Idoru, who is seeking independence from her owners. Also involved in the complex plot, centered on the bohemian community that has grown up on and around San Francisco's now derelict Golden Gate Bridge, are several other returning characters, such as the incredibly buff former bicycle messenger Chevette, plus a number of new eccentrics of the sort the author portrays so well. Gibson breaks little new thematic ground with this novel, but the cocreator of cyberpunk takes his readers on a wild and exciting ride filled with enough off-the-wall ideas and extended metaphors to fuel half a dozen SF tales. Author tour. (Nov.) <br>Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The protagonists of this haunting, emotionally bleak collection of stories—a new widow confessing to two surprised Legion of Mary sisters the secrets of her marriage to a hateful man in "Sitting with the Dead"; a woman stalked by her lonely, possibly violent ex-husband in "On the Streets"; an heiress who compulsively recounts her tragic life story to total strangers in "Solitude"; and a couple who exploit each other on a blind date in "An Evening Out"—are generally 50-ish, usually childless and almost always burdened by regret over relationships decayed or forgone. They live in the aftermath of irremediable mistakes, ruefully cognizant that hope and romance are often delusory covers for self-interest and survival. Even the young—an 18-year-old girl who weeps with regret over future betrayals, an Irish woman who calls off her wedding after realizing she loves the dream of America more than her intended—are melancholy and introspective. Trevor reveals his native Ireland as a world sandwiched between modernity and its accompanying wealth, secularism and vulgarity, and a past that was more soulful and pious but also more restrictive. The much-lauded Trevor (_Felicia's Journey_; <em>The Story of Lucy Gault</em>; etc.) explores the many sources and shadings of regret with his usual delicate but brilliant psychological nuance, brightened occasionally by nostalgia for the lost love that once impelled his characters forward. <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>"If one were to pick a single word to characterize <em>A Bit on the Side</em>, it would be forlorn," writes Michael Dirda in the <em>Washington Post</em>. Here, as in his two dozen or so collections of short fiction and novels (see <em>The Story of Lucy Gault</em>, <strong></strong>1/2 Jan/Feb 2003), Trevor introduces credible characters beset by hopelessness. But these Chekhovian stories, many previously published in <em>The New Yorker</em>, offer anything but hopeless reading. Trevor is a master of simple, quiet prose and psychological intuition, and, even if you don’t identify with each character’s plight, you’ll recognize familiar patterns of behavior. That critics laud the relative merits of each story attests to the great power of this collection as a whole. It only proves, as <em>The New Yorker</em> claims, that Trevor may be "the greatest living writer of short stories." </p><p><em>Copyright © 2004 Phillips &amp; Nelson Media, Inc.</em></p>

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<p>Two beautiful, memorable novels in one volume, both focussing on women who retreat into their imaginations until the boundaries between what is real and what is not become blurred. In 'Reading Turgenev', which was shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize, an Irish country girl is trapped in a loveless marriage with an older man. But she finds unusual solace - in secret meetings with a man who shares her passion for Russian novels. The second story, 'My House in Umbria' tells how romantic novelist Emily Delahunty helps the survivors of a bomb attack on a train and invents colourful pasts for her convalescent patients.</p>


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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>“A true historical imagination is exceedingly rare, and [_Tun-huang_] is a superb example of such an imagination at work.” —Robert Payne, <em>ASIA</em>  </p><p>“The unique thing about Inoue’s work, for me . . . is that every story presents a vision, and that unlike the visions in books by other authors, I can always follow the vision as I’m reading, always believe it; Inoue has lived and felt these images and has the simplest and airiest language for them that I have ever seen. I don’t _need_ to believe his illuminations, they are simply <em>there</em> in the book, as facts.” —Peter Handke  </p><p>“a work of superb historical imagination. . . ” —James Kirkup, <em>The Independent</em>  </p><p>“Early in the 20th century an incredible hoard of Buddhist sutras and other manuscripts was discovered by itinerant monk in Tun-huang. Archaeologists recovered thousands of documents that have been concealed in the Thousand Buddha Caves for 900 years. The author…speculated on the reasons for the hiding of such treasures, and this fascinating and exotic novel is the result.” —_Publishers Weekly_  </p><p>“Historical reconstruction of a very personal and special kind.” —Donald Richie  </p><p>“An enthralling tale.” —_Oriental Economist_  </p><p>“A unique writer who has managed to escape the often narrow topical bounds of the Japanese novel.” —_Japan Quarterly_  </p><p>"One of Japan's most prolific and respected authors..." —_Japan Economic Newswire_  </p><p>“The descriptive passages in Yasushi Inoue's ‘Under the Shadow of Mount Bandai’ are worthy of the longer passages of an Anne Radcliff Gothic tale" —_The Japan Times_  </p><p>''One of the most respected novelists in Japan.'' —_The New York Times_</p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>More than a thousand years ago, an extraordinary trove of early Buddhist sutras and other scriptures was secreted away in caves near the Silk Road city of Tun-huang. But who hid this magnificent treasure and why? In _Tun-huang_, the great modern Japanese novelist Yasushi Inoue tells the story of Chao Hsing-te, a young Chinese man whose accidental failure to take the all-important exam that will qualify him as a high government official leads to a chance encounter that draws him farther and farther into the wild and contested lands west of the Chinese Empire. Here he finds love, distinguishes himself in battle, and ultimately devotes himself to the strange task of depositing the scrolls in the caves where, many centuries later, they will be rediscovered. A book of magically vivid scenes, fierce passions, and astonishing adventures, _Tun-huang_ is also a profound and stirring meditation on the mystery of history and the hidden presence of the past. </p>

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<div><h3>Review</h3><p><em>USA Today</em>One of the best resources on proven ways to exercise the healing powers of the mind. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>A spy for the Typhon Pact—a new political rival of the Federation—steals the plans for Starfleet’s newest technological advance: the slipstream drive. To stop the Typhon Pact from unlocking the drive’s secrets, Starfleet Intelligence recruits a pair of genetically enhanced agents: Dr. Julian Bashir, of station Deep Space 9, and Sarina Douglas, a woman whose talents Bashir helped bring to fruition, and whom Bashir thinks of as his long-lost true love.</p><p>Bashir and Douglas are sent to infiltrate the mysterious species known as the Breen, find the hidden slipstream project, and destroy it. Meanwhile, light-years away, Captain Ezri Dax and her crew on the <em>U.S.S. Aventine</em> play a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a Typhon Pact fleet that stands between them and the safe retrieval of Bashir and Douglas from hostile territory. </p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>Product Description</strong><br />The acclaimed author of the groundbreaking bestseller <em>Schoolgirls</em> reveals the dark side of pink and pretty: the rise of the girlie-girl, she warns, is not that innocent.  </p><p>Pink and pretty or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is. Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as a source—the source—of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages.</p><p>But, realistically, how many times can you say no when your daughter begs for a pint-size wedding gown or the latest Hannah Montana CD? And how dangerous is pink and pretty anyway—especially given girls' successes in the classroom and on the playing field? Being a princess is just make-believe, after all; eventually they grow out of it. Or do they? Does playing Cinderella shield girls from early sexualization—or prime them for it? Could today's little princess become tomorrow's sexting teen? And what if she does? Would that make her in charge of her sexuality—or an unwitting captive to it?</p><p>Those questions hit home with Peggy Orenstein, so she went sleuthing. She visited Disneyland and the international toy fair, trolled American Girl Place and Pottery Barn Kids, and met beauty pageant parents with preschoolers tricked out like Vegas showgirls. She dissected the science, created an online avatar, and parsed the original fairy tales. The stakes turn out to be higher than she—or we—ever imagined: nothing less than the health, development, and futures of our girls. From premature sexualization to the risk of depression to rising rates of narcissism, the potential negative impact of this new girlie-girl culture is undeniable—yet armed with awareness and recognition, parents can effectively counterbalance its influence in their daughters' lives.</p><p><em>Cinderella Ate My Daughter</em> is a must-read for anyone who cares about girls, and for parents helping their daughters navigate the rocky road to adulthood. </p><hr /><p><strong>An Exclusive Note from Peggy Orenstein </strong>   </p><p>As a mom, I admit, I was initially tempted to give the new culture of pink and pretty a pass. There are already so many things to be vigilant about as a parent; my energy was stretched to its limit. So my daughter slept in a Cinderella gown for a few years. Girls will be girls, right? </p><p>They will—and that is exactly why we need to pay more, rather than less, attention to what’s happening in their world. According to the American Psychological Association, the emphasis on beauty and play-sexiness at ever-younger ages is increasing girls’ vulnerability to the pitfalls that most concern parents: eating disorders, negative body image, depression, risky sexual behavior. Yet here we are with nearly half of six-year-old girls regularly using lipstick or lip gloss. The percentage of eight- to twelve-year-old girls wearing eyeliner or mascara has doubled in the last TWO years (I ask you: shouldn’t the percentage of eight-year-olds wearing eyeliner be zero?). A researcher told me that when she asks teenage girls how a sexual experience felt to them they respond by telling her how they think they looked. Meanwhile, the marketing of pink, pretty, and “sassy” has become a gigantic business: the Disney Princesses alone are pulling in four BILLION dollars in revenue annually. </p><p>As I immersed myself in the research for this book, I began to trace a line from the innocence of Cinderella to the struggles Miley Cyrus has faced in trying to “age up,” which in turn was connected to how regular girls present themselves on Facebook (where identity itself becomes a performance, crafted in response to your audience of 322 BFFs). It seemed that even as new educational and professional opportunities unfurled before my daughter and her peers, so did the path that encouraged them to equate identity with image, self-expression with appearance, femininity with performance, pleasure with pleasing, and sexuality with sexualization. </p><p>So much is at stake, for mothers with girls of all ages: How do we define girlhood? What about femininity? Beauty? Sexuality? Our choices will tell our girls how we see them, who we want them to be, our values, expectations, hopes, and dreams. Do we want them to be judged by the content of their character or the color of their lip gloss? </p><p>I’m the first to admit that I do not have all the answers. Who could? But as a mother who also happens to be a journalist (or perhaps vice versa), I wanted to lay out the context—the marketing, science, history, culture—in which we make our choices, to provide information and insight that might help parents, educators, and all of us who care about girls guide them toward their true happily-ever-afters.</p><hr /><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Orenstein, who has written about girls for nearly two decades (Schoolgirls), finds today's pink and princess-obsessed girl culture grating when it threatens to lure her own young daughter, Daisy. In her quest to determine whether princess mania is merely a passing phase or a more sinister marketing plot with long-term negative impact, Orenstein travels to Disneyland, American Girl Place, the American International Toy Fair; visits a children's beauty pageant; attends a Miley Cyrus concert; tools around the Internet; and interviews parents, historians, psychologists, marketers, and others. While she uncovers some disturbing news (such as the American Psychological Association's assertion that the "girlie-girl" culture's emphasis on beauty and play-sexiness can increase girls' susceptibility to depression, eating disorders, distorted body image, and risky sexual behavior), she also finds that locking one's daughter away in a tower like a modern-day Rapunzel may not be necessary. Orenstein concludes that parents who think through their values early on and set reasonable limits, encourage dialogue and skepticism, and are canny about the consumer culture can combat the 24/7 "media machine" aimed at girls and hold off the focus on beauty, materialism, and the color pink somewhat. With insight and biting humor, the author explores her own conflicting feelings as a mother as she protects her offspring and probes the roots and tendrils of the girlie-girl movement. (Jan.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. œThe mountain path is the road of the dead, writes Thubron (Shadow of the Silk Road) in this engrossing and affecting travel memoir that transcends the mere physical journey. In the wake of his mother™s death, Thubron sets off to Mount Kailas in Tibet, a peak sacred to one-fifth of the world™s population and the source of four of India™s great rivers. Kailas has never been climbed: the slopes are important to Tibetan Buddhists who say the mountain™s guardian is Demchog (a tantric variant of Shiva). Along with two guides, Thubron embarks on a pilgrimage that begins in Nepal and crosses into Tibet, recounting not only his arduous journey but also the political and cultural history of Tibet and the West™s continued fascination with its mysticism. Along the way, he observes pilgrims of various religions converging on Kailas and the myriad monasteries, most of which were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and rebuilt decades later. It is the poignant evocations of his mother and sister (who died at 21), interwoven with his profound respect for the Tibetan culture and landscape that make Thubron™s memoir an utterly moving read. (Mar.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> Kailas is a sacred, snow-capped mountain of the Himalayas in a remote area of western Tibet. There have been no recorded attempts to climb it, in deference to Buddhist, Hindu, B�n, and Jainist beliefs. Award-winning British travel writer and novelist Thubron (Shadow of the Silk Road, 2007) traveled along the Karnali River (a tributary of the Ganges) by foot with only a guide, a cook, and a horse man on a long and often treacherous trek to visit this mystical peak, considered holy by one-fifth of humankind. The journey is the reward, for both writer and reader, in this rich, beautiful account of the landscape, people, culture, and politics of Tibet. Much more than a travel guide or history lesson, this engrossing and gorgeously written book is also a stirring memoir tinged with the author�s own grief, reflecting on the joys and losses he�s experienced. Thubron is the steward of his father�s legacy and keeper of his mother�s memories, sharing familial recollections on a pilgrimage toward one of nature�s precious jewels, and his own parentless future. --Chris Keech </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>Oprah Book Club® Selection, May 1998</strong>: "I come from a place where breath, eyes and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like the hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to." The place is Haiti and the speaker is Sophie, the heroine of Edwidge Danticat's novel, "Breath, Eyes, Memory." Like her protagonist, Danticat is also Haitian; like her, she was raised in Haiti by an aunt until she came to the United States at age 12. Indeed, in her short stories, Danticat has often drawn on her background to fund her fiction, and she continues to do so in her debut novel. </p><p>The story begins in Haiti, on Mother's Day, when young Sophie discovers that she is about to leave the only home she has ever known with her Tante Atie in Croix-des-Rosets, Haiti, to go live with her mother in New York City. These early chapters in Haiti are lovely, subtly evoking the tender, painful relationship between the motherless child and the childless woman who feels honor bound to guard the natural mother's rights to the girl's affections above her own. Presented with a Mother's Day card, Tante Atie responds: "'It is for a mother, your mother.' She motioned me away with a wave of her hand. 'When it is Aunt's Day, you can make me one.'" Danticat also uses these pages to limn a vibrant portrait of life in Haiti from the cups of ginger tea and baskets of cassava bread served at community potlucks to the folk tales of a "people in Guinea who carry the sky on their heads." </p><p>With Sophie's transition from a fairly happy existence with her aunt and grandmother in rural Haiti to life in New York with a mother she has never seen, Danticat's roots as a short-story writer become more evident; "Breath, Eyes, Memory" begins to read more like a collection of connected stories than a seamlessly evolved novel. In a couple of short chapters, Sophie arrives in New York, meets her mother, makes the acquaintance of her mother's new boyfriend, Marc, and discovers that she was the product of a rape when her mother was a teenager in Haiti. The novel then jumps several years ahead to Sophie's graduation from high school and her infatuation with an older man who lives next door. Unfortunately, this is also the point in the novel where Danticat begins to lay her themes on with a trowel instead of a brush: Sophie's mother becomes obsessed with protecting her daughter's virginity, going so far as to administer physical "tests" on a regular basis--testing which leads eventually to a rift in their relationship and to Sophie's struggle with her own sexuality. Soon the litany of victimization is flying thick and fast: female genital mutilation, incest, rape, frigidity, breast cancer, and abortion are the issues that arise in the final third of the novel, eventually drowning both fine writing and perceptive characterization under a deluge of angst. </p><p>Still, there is much to admire about "Breath, Eyes, Memory," and if at times the plot becomes overheated, Danticat's lyrical, vivid prose offers some real delight. If nothing else, this novel is sure to entice readers to look for Danticat's short stories--and possibly to sample other fiction from the West Indies as well. <em>--Alix Wilber</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>A distinctive new voice with a sensitive insight into Haitian culture distinguishes this graceful debut novel about a young girl's coming of age under difficult circumstances. "I come from a place where breath, eyes and memory are one, a place where you carry your past like the hair on your head," says narrator Sophie Caco, ruminating on the chains of duty and love that bind the courageous women in her family. The burden of being a woman in Haiti, where purity and chastity are a matter of family honor, and where "nightmares are passed on through generations like heirlooms," is Danticat's theme. Born after her mother Martine was raped, Sophie is raised by her Tante Atie in a small town in Haiti. At 12 she joins Martine in New York, while Atie returns to her native village to care for indomitable Grandmother Ife. Neither Sophie nor Martine can escape the weight of the past, resulting in a pattern of insomnia, bulimia, sexual trauma and mental anguish that afflicts both of them and leads inexorably to tragedy. Though her tale is permeated with a haunting sadness, Danticat also imbues it with color and magic, beautifully evoking the pace and character of Creole life, the feel of both village and farm communities, where the omnipresent Tontons Macoute mean daily terror, where voudon rituals and superstitions still dominate even as illiterate inhabitants utilize such 20th-century conveniences as cassettes to correspond with emigres in America. In simple, lyrical prose enriched by an elegiac tone and piquant observations, she makes Sophie's confusion and guilt, her difficult assimilation into American culture and her eventual emotional liberation palpably clear. Paperback rights to Vintage; author tour. <br />Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>More than 200,00 copies of earlier editions have been sold; this reissue includes a new introduction by the author to mark the twenty-first birthday of this remarkable book.</p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>Howard Gardner</strong> is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor in Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. In 1990, he was the first American to receive the University of Louisville's Grawemeyer Award in education. In 2000, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. </p>

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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>When Napoli met the handsome Sebastian at a cookbook party in New York City, she was intrigued by this man who traveled to Bhutan regularly. And when the accomplished L.A.-based journalist (MSNBC, CNN, public radio's Marketplace) researched the country about which he spoke so enthusiastically, she became entranced with Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan kingdom that sits between India and China. This country--dubbed "the happiest on earth" because of its focus on environmental and social progress--is hard to get to, with its remote location and governmental deterrents to tourism, like a per-person, per-day tourist tax. But a friend of Sebastian's needs help with startup radio station Kuzoo FM, so Napoli leaves L.A. and goes to Bhutan for six weeks. She writes, "After more than two decades of reducing even the most complex issues to 1,000 words or less, I was tired of observing life from a distance." While the author turns an eye on her own motivations (nothing further developed with Sebastian), she refrains from tortured navel-gazing and instead shares and reflects on Bhutan's people, history, and customs (from painting phalluses on houses to repel evil spirits to Buddhism's role in daily life). Napoli's adventures at home and abroad, in nature and career and spirit, will delight readers. (Feb.) <br>(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>A successful journalist working for public radio in Los Angeles, Napoli hit a wall. Burned out and overwhelmed by regret, she wondered how to recharge her life. Enter a friend of a friend with connections to the tiny Himalayan country of Bhutan. In 2006, this Buddhist kingdom, long cocooned against the outside world, launched a new youth radio station, Kuzoo FM (kuzoo zampo means hello). Would Napoli like to volunteer as a consultant? So begins a love affair with a land unlike any other, a bond that lifts Napoli out of her blues and enriches the lives of the young people with whom she works. The stories of the wildly popular station are charming and gracefully revealing as Napoli shares her experiences of Bhutan�s magnificent landscape, fiery cuisine, and openhanded daily life in a society that measures its achievements not with a Gross National Product but, rather, with Gross National Happiness. Napoli�s engaging, keenly observed, and informative chronicle captures Bhutan midmetamorphosis as it transforms itself into a democracy and as media and the Internet redefine the Bhutanese concept of contentment. --Donna Seaman </p>

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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Carey, known for his quirkily skewed re-creations of Australian culture (Oscar and Lucinda; The Tax Collector), has outdone himself in this bizarre, uncannily strange dystopia about the life of a dwarf, who narrates the tale. Tristan Smith, born to an unmarried woman who runs a radical theater in a land called Effica, suffers from a facial disfigurement so severe that only his mother can look upon him without revulsion. His life as a child is unrelievedly sad until he discovers the various guises that theater can provide, which launches him into the vibrant world of his mother's professional circle. A consistent theme-political, cultural and historical-is the position of Effica as an "Ootland" state, peripheral to the culture of faraway Voorstand, a kind of Anglo/Dutch hegemony whose world dominance in all things is beyond dispute, though not unchallenged by such underground dissidents as Tristan's mother. And it is this depiction of an entire world culture-futuristic, in some respects fitted out with unfathomable features, such as a kind of mass-audience shadow play involving live actors and holograms, as well as familiar figures like Rimbaud and Baudelaire-that gives this novel its refreshingly improbable authenticity. When Tristan's mother dies tragically, he falls in with a motley crew of her colleagues; together they embark on a secret mission to Voorstand, in search of his father, an Ootlander actor who has become famous by selling his soul to the Voorstand theater. The second half of the book details Tristan's time on the run in Voorstand, where he finds spectacular renown in the guise of a famous folk figure, Bruder Mouse, whose battles with The Hairy Man are somehow central to Voorstander's understanding of themselves. When he at last is, literally, unmasked, Tristan and his mates are charged with all manner of crimes of mispresentation by the state. Carey's novel approach to the narrative-the entire tale is in the form of Tristan's direct testimony to formal authorities of Voorstand culture-is brilliantly maintained throughout, and the fairy-tale quality of its figuration makes for a surpassingly rich feast of metaphors and mercurial meanings-George Orwell and Lewis Carroll wrapped into one. Author tour. <br>Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Carey creates a fully realized parallel universe in this unusual novel set in Efica, an island nation under the political and cultural domination of the larger Voorstand. Part Bildungsroman, part political allegory, and part meditation on identity, this novel traces the first 23 years of Tristan, its eponymous narrator, a hideously deformed dwarf and son of actress Felicity Smith (the head of a radical theater company and champion of Efican culture). In the novel's first half, Tristan tells of his early adventures with the company, culminating with Felicity's fatal foray into politics. In the second, he recounts his later travels in Voorstand in search of Bill Millefleur, an actor he believes to be his father. This inventive, multilayered work should only add to Carey's already considerable reputation. Highly recommended.<br><em>Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.</em><br>Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>When Johnson quit her job as the director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas, the media went wild; lawsuits were filed; prolife advocates rejoiced. Now this former clinic director reveals the details of her dramatic move from abortion rights advocate to "the right side of the fence" and the prolife movement. Johnson began as a volunteer, moving through the ranks until becoming director of the Bryan, Tex., clinic. Then she witnessed an ultrasound-guided abortion, and she changed. "I was taking a new stand, beginning a new life," she says of her move to the other side. This emotional account reveals Johnson's remarkable journey through prochoice thinking, two abortions, her love/hate relationship with prolife advocates outside the clinic, and her eventual understanding of abortion. Prolife advocates will salivate over her story, abortion rights advocates will be skeptical,but those who oppose abortion will find inspiration, education, and emotion. Johnson offers a well-planned, well-written account that will touch nerves on both sides of the issue. (Jan.) --Publishers Weekly Bookline, December 22, 2011 </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Abby Johnson quit her job in October 2009. That simple act became a national news story because Abby was the director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas who, after participating in her first actual abortion procedure, walked across the road to join the Coalition for Life. <br><em>Unplanned</em> is a heartstopping personal drama of life-and-death encounters, a courtroom battle, and spiritual transformation that speaks hope and compassion into the political controversy that surrounds this issue. Telling Abby’s story from both sides of the abortion clinic property line, this book is a must-read for anyone who cares about the life versus rights debate and helping women who face crisis pregnancies. </p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>Fury</em> is a gloss on fin-de-siècle angst from the master of the quintuple entendre. </p><p>Now, in New York, he is filled with wrath. Solanka is far from being an Everyman, but his fury is a kind of Everyfury. It's road rage writ large--the natural reaction to an excess of mental traffic. There are several books running simultaneously here: a mystery, a family romance, a bitingly satirical portrait of millennial Manhattan, and a sci-fi revolutionary fantasy. A single fragment gives a sense of Rushdie's reflexive multiplicity: when Solanka finally faces his memories of childhood, he recalls "his damn Yoknapatawpha, his accursed Malgudi." Here's a writer who, leading us into the tender places of his protagonist's soul, stops long enough to reference not just Faulkner but Narayan as well. If it sounds like a bit of a mess, it is. If it sounds frighteningly intelligent, it's that too. <em>--Claire Dederer</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The sea change has invigorated Rushdie. His new novel is very much an American book, a bitingly satiric, often wildly farcical picture of American society in the first years of the 21st century. The twice transplanted protagonist (Bombay born, Cambridge educated, now Manhattan resident) Prof. Malik Solanka is an unimaginably wealthy man, transformed from a philosophy professor into a BBC-TV star, then into the inventor of a wildly popular doll called Little Brain. Compelled to relinquish control of the doll when it metamorphoses into an industry, the furious Solanka flees London for an apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. His prose crackling with irony, Rushdie catches roiling undercurrents of incivility and inchoate anger: in cab drivers, moviegoers and sidewalk pedestrians; in ethnic antagonisms; in political confrontations; and in Solly himself, as he tries to surmount his guilt over having abandoned a loving wife and three-year-old son in England, and as he becomes involved with two new women. Rushdie's brilliantly observant portrait of "this money-mad burg" is mercilessly au courant, with references to George Gush and Al Bore, to Elian and Tony Soprano, and to "shawls made from the chin fluff of extinct mountain goats." The action is helter-skelter fast and refreshingly concise; this is a slender book for Rushdie, and his relatively narrow focus results in a crisper narrative; there are fewer puns and a deeper emotional involvement with his characters. Still, his tendency to go over the top leads to some incredulity for the reader; it's a bit much that short, unprepossessing Solly is a magnet for gorgeous, articulate women, who all tend to speak in the same didactic monologues. On the whole, however, readers will nod in acknowledgement of Rushdie's recognition that "the whole world was burning on a shorter fuse." Rushdie remains a master of satire that rings true with unsettling acuity and dark, comedic brilliance. Agent, Andrew Wylie. 8-city author tour. (Sept. 11)Forecast: Rushdie has never been so sharply observant of the American psyche and the contemporary scene, and thus so relevant to U.S. readers. His increasing visibility after the isolation of the fatwa years should create a buzz of interest in this novel. </p><p>Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.</p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Richly inventive and breathlessly paced, this variation on the old "around the world" race theme surpasses Volsky's earlier acclaimed fantasy The White Tribunal in deft characterizations and sly, wry wit. Tottering on the brink of war, the Vonahr republic watches uneasily as Grewzland's "vainglorious mystic" imperior Ogron blitzes his unprepared neighbors. The traditionally neutral Low Herz, however, ruled by Ogron's womanizing dilettante cousin, Miltzin IX, possesses a fantastic new magical weapon with a mind of its ownDthe green Sentient Masterfire. When Miltzin decrees an international race called "The Grand Ellipse" for the wealth and status of a Herzian barony, luscious Vonahrish bluestocking Luzelle Devaire accepts her government's secret commission: win the race, convince the lascivious Miltzin to sell Masterfire to Vonahr, and thus annihilate Grewzland's militaristic threat for good. She also hopes to escape the life of genteel wifely servitude that her domineering father has arranged for her. As feisty and resourceful as her Victorian ancestors, Luzelle finds herself drawn to her two chief rivals, the elegant Vonahrish ex-Marquis Girays v'Alisante, her former fianc , and the noble Grewzian Overcommander Karsler Stornzof, product of the mystical Promontory, where honor counts more than life's blood itself. Although Volsky's well-crafted novel uses the traditional quest format common in fantasies, Luzelle and her admirers provide thrilling entertainment for readers of all genres as they hurtle from one narrow escape to another. Brimming with vibrant, exotic settings and Volsky's knack for utterly convincing dialogue (impeded only slightly by contorted consonants in proper names), this lively adventure makes for unflagging reading enjoyment that should appeal to a wide swath of SF and fantasy fans. (Oct.) <br>Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>When an ambitious and fanatical tyrant threatens to invade the rational republic of Vonahr, the leaders of that land resort to desperate measures to acquire a magical creation that could mean the difference between conquest and freedom. To help her country, a young Vonahrish adventuress enters the spectacular race known as the Grand Ellipse in the hopes of winning an audience with the king, who possesses the secret of "Sentient Fire." The author of The White Tribunal excels in portraying fantasy worlds steeped in quasihistorical authenticity and convincing "period detail." Reminiscent of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days and other "great race" novels, Volsky's latest sf adventure features an engaging heroine determined to live by her own rules, even at the cost of her heart's desire. <br>Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>For anyone who's ever dreamed of finding a cash windfall, Grippando's (The Abduction) new crime novel offers a cautionary tale of greed, family secrets and the dangers of getting what you wish for. Just before Frank Duffy dies, he tells his physician son, Ryan, that there is $2 million hidden in the attic, and that Frank got the money through blackmail?albeit off someone who "deserved it." The level-headed Ryan considers both claims unbelievable?until he finds the money. What secrets had his mild-mannered, hard-working father been hiding? Meanwhile, Amy Parkins, while struggling to support her daughter and her grandmother and to put herself through law school, receives $200,000 from an anonymous benefactor, apparently Frank Duffy, whom she'd never met. Why? Could the gift have anything to do with her mother's mysterious suicide 20 years earlier? Troubled by the criminal implications of his father's legacy, Ryan decides he can't touch the cash until he knows where it came from. His questions kick off a wild ride involving lawyers and guns, Panamanian banks, seductive strangers and too much FBI interest for comfort. Amy, too, tries to trace the money, putting her on a collision course with Ryan and his greed-maddened family. As Ryan and Amy search for the money's source and meaning, they uncover a conspiracy involving high-ranking government officials, multi-billion-dollar corporations and a hidden crime committed on a hot summer night years ago. The final revelation is a real kicker, but it would carry even more force if overly tricky plot contrivances hadn't diluted the suspense of what came before. <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Grippando (The Abduction, LJ 3/15/98) has done it again, crafting a thrilling scenario filled with terrifying images of money's dark side. Dr. Ryan Duffy returns home to attend his father's funeral, expecting to console his mother. Instead, his father's dying words, wrought with allusions to blackmail, encourage Ryan to seek out an unexpected pile of cash squirreled away in the attic. Mom is not talking about the millions there, and Ryan's pregnant sister and abusive brother-in-law turn sinister. Meanwhile, single mom Amy Parkens receives an anonymous package from the dying Duffy Senior?$200,000 in cash in a crockpot box. Amy traces the money to the Duffys through the crockpot warranty, and this results in an immediate but wary attraction between Amy and Ryan. The pair circle around a decades-old mystery involving their parents and those they considered their most trusted friends and allies. Highly recommended.<br /><em>-?Susan A. Zappia, Maricopa Cty. Lib. Dist., Phoenix</em><br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>This year Valentine's Day isn't for romance. It's for murder. Mega rich restaurant owner Jack Barnes and his second wife Zee are very much in love. However, their plans for Valentine's Day are about to be torn apart by the most violent murder. Who is the strange figure plotting this sick crime? Who hates Jack that much? There are plenty of suspects living in Jack's fancy block of flats. Is it them, or could it be the work of an outsider with a twisted mind? One thing's for sure, the police have got their work cut out solving this bloody mess. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>JAMES PATTERSON is one of the best-known and biggest-selling writers of all time. He is the author of some of the most popular series of the past decade - the Alex Cross, Women's Murder Club and Detective Michael Bennett novels - and he has written many other number one bestsellers including romance novels and stand-alone thrillers. He lives in Florida with his wife and son. James is passionate about encouraging children to read. Inspired by his own son who was a reluctant reader, he also writes a range of books specifically for young readers. James has formed a partnership with the National Literacy Trust, an independent, UK-based charity that changes lives through literacy. </p>

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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Maxwell (_Signora da Vinci_) tries in vain to flesh out one of the most famous love stories ever told. Her Renaissance Juliet is an 18-year-old Florentine, the educated daughter of Capello Capelletti, a silk trader whose business foibles have led him to promise his daughter to his would-be partner, Jacopo Strozzi. At a party celebrating her best friend Lucrezia's betrothal, Juliet meets Romeo Monticecco, who reveals that he snuck in hoping to smooth over an old feud. The two are immediately smitten with one another, and their secret courtship ensures. Shakespeare is a tough act to follow, and Maxwell falters with both her flowery writing style (This woman, this earthly angel—perhaps 'Goddess' suited her more) and her hyperbolic, black-and-white characters. Jacopo, for instance, is not only boring and physically grotesque, he's also the embodiment of evil. In contrast, Romeo is respectful and appreciative of women, great in the sack, and wise beyond his years. The story unfolds as the play does, but Maxwell's tweaks amount to a disappointing attempt to fix what isn't broken. <em>(Feb.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Maxwell delivers a mesmerizing retelling of the famous star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, in her latest novel, set in Italy at the beginning of the Renaissance. Juliet Capelletti is a headstrong, intelligent young lady who is facing an arranged marriage to Jacopo Strozzi, her father's new business partner. She does not look forward to her match but knows that it will make her parents happy. Juliet's entire future is forever changed one night at the engagement party of her best friend, Lucrezia, when she meets the handsome Romeo Monticecco. Romeo is at the party to seek reconciliation between his family and the Capelettis, who have been feuding and retaliating against each other for years. <br>Juliet and Romeo find a chance to talk together alone under the stars, and their destiny unfolds. Both are surprised by the other's passion for poetry and shared interest in Dante Alighieri's <em>Vita Nuova</em>. After their first meeting, Juliet is determined to find a way out of her upcoming marriage to Jacopo, even though this means defying her family's wishes for her and possibly destroying the business between her father and her betrothed. <br>What unfolds is a beautiful love story between the soul mates Romeo and Juliet. Maxwell realistically portrays the torment with which Juliet is faced as she wonders what her future holds. The things I enjoyed the most about the novel were how Maxwell drew parallels between Dante and his love, Beatrice, and Romeo and Juliet, and her use of poetry and quotes from Dante throughout the novel. Readers will savor this exquisite and magical love story."<br>-_The Historical Novels Review_ [Editor's Choice]   </p><p>"Not many writers would dare to compete with William Shakespeare. But Robin Maxwell pulls it off. Her star-crossed young lovers are just as unforgettable as the Bard's, and now readers get to see what happens off-stage." <br>-Sharon Kay Penman, <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>Devil's Brood</em>   </p><p>"A page-turner that will leave you breathless." <br>-Lalita Tademy, Oprah's Book Club Pick and <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>Cane River</em>   </p><p>"A reigning queen of historical fiction takes on the treasured tale of <em>Romeo and Juliet</em> in a tribute that would make Shakespeare stand up and cheer...I love this book!" <br>-Michelle Moran, National bestselling author of <em>Cleopatra's Daughter</em>   </p><p>"Maxwell conjures up an intimate historical re-telling of the timeless classic, evoking the world's most famous lovers with breathtaking passion and literary elegance." <br>-C.W. Gortner, author of <em>The Last Queen</em>   </p>

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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>An oral history of the modern punk-revival's West Coast Birthplace</strong>  </p><p>Outside of New York and London, California's Bay Area claims the oldest continuous punk-rock scene in the world. <em>Gimme Something Better</em> brings this outrageous and influential punk scene to life, from the notorious final performance of the Sex Pistols, to Jello Biafra's bid for mayor, the rise of <em>Maximum RocknRoll</em> magazine, and the East Bay pop-punk sound that sold millions around the globe. Throngs of punks, including members of the Dead Kennedys, Avengers, Flipper, MDC, Green Day, Rancid, NOFX, and AFI, tell their own stories in this definitive account, from the innovative art-damage of San Francisco's Fab Mab in North Beach, to the still vibrant all-ages DIY ethos of Berkeley's Gilman Street. Compiled by longtime Bay Area journalists Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor, <em>Gimme Something Better</em> chronicles more than two decades of punk music, progressive politics, social consciousness, and divine decadence, told by the people who made it happen. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>Jack Boulware</strong> is the author of <em>San Francisco Bizarro</em>, and was a columnist at <em>SF Weekly</em> throughout the 1990s. His writing has appeared in many publications including <em>The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Playboy</em> and _ Mojo_.   </p><p><strong>Silke Tudor </strong>was born in the Bay Area and reared on punk. She was a columnist at <em>SF Weekly</em> and the <em>Village Voice</em>. </p>

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<div><p class="description">For the first time, Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the epic story of the precipitous rise and fall of the recording industry over the past three decades, when the incredible success of the CD turned the music business into one of the most glamorous, high-profile industries in the world -- and the advent of file sharing brought it to its knees. In a comprehensive, fast-paced account full of larger-than-life personalities, Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper shows that, after the incredible wealth and excess of the '80s and '90s, Sony, Warner, and the other big players brought about their own downfall through years of denial and bad decisions in the face of dramatic advances in technology.</p>
<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>For the first time, Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the epic story of the precipitous rise and fall of the recording industry over the past three decades, when the incredible success of the CD turned the music business into one of the most glamorous, high-profile industries in the world -- and the advent of file sharing brought it to its knees. In a comprehensive, fast-paced account full of larger-than-life personalities, Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper shows that, after the incredible wealth and excess of the '80s and '90s, Sony, Warner, and the other big players brought about their own downfall through years of denial and bad decisions in the face of dramatic advances in technology.Big Music has been asleep at the wheel ever since Napster revolutionized the way music was distributed in the 1990s. Now, because powerful people like Doug Morris and Tommy Mottola failed to recognize the incredible potential of file-sharing technology, the labels are in danger of becoming completely obsolete. Knopper, who has been writing about the industry for more than ten years, has unparalleled access to those intimately involved in the music world's highs and lows. Based on interviews with more than two hundred music industry sources -- from Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. to renegade Napster creator Shawn Fanning -- Knopper is the first to offer such a detailed and sweeping contemporary history of the industry's wild ride through the past three decades. From the birth of the compact disc, through the explosion of CD sales in the '80s and '90s, the emergence of Napster, and the secret talks that led to iTunes, to the current collapse of the industry as CD sales plummet, Knopper takes us inside the boardrooms, recording studios, private estates, garage computer labs, company jets, corporate infighting, and secret deals of the big names and behind-the-scenes players who made it all happen.With unforgettable portraits of the music world's mighty and formerly mighty; detailed accounts of both brilliant and stupid ideas brought to fruition or left on the cutting-room floor; the dish on backroom schemes, negotiations, and brawls; and several previously unreported stories, Appetite for Self-Destruction is a riveting, informative, and highly entertaining read. It offers a broad perspective on the current state of Big Music, how it got into these dire straits, and where it's going from here -- and a cautionary tale for the digital age.</p></div>


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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>"A magnificent treatise by a distinguished philosopher on the pursuit of spiritual perfection." -- <em>—Publishers Weekly</em>  </p><p>"A major contribution to the only important question: the transformation of our soul in Christ." -- <em>—Archbishop Fulton Sheen</em>  </p><p>"A masterpiece of modern spirituality: eminently practical and highly recommended." -- <em>—Fr. John Hardon, S.J.</em>  </p><p>"A solid and penetrating analysis of the Christian virtues, and their application in the struggle toward Christian perfection." -- <em>—Library Journal</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Recognized as a modern spiritual classic and perhaps Dietrich von Hildebrand's greatest work, this sublime and practical study gives a penetrating analysis of the true path to holiness for those who love Christ. The first requisite is the person's desire for change, and with that fundamental attitude in mind, von Hildebrand devotes a chapter to each of the successive spiritual attitudes necessary for those who strive for Christian perfection. The Beatitudes are treated with beauty and depth in an uncompromising challenge to every serious Christian to put into practice these teachings of Christ. </p>

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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>An Essay from Author David Sirota</strong>   </p><p><strong>Five ’80s Flicks That Explain How the ’80s Still Define Our World</strong><br><em>Back To Our Future</em> posits that the 1980s--and specifically 1980s pop culture--frames the way we think about major issues today. The decade is the lens through which we see our world. To understand what that means, here are five classic flicks that show how the 1980s still shapes our thinking on government, the “rogue,” militarism, race, and even our not-so-distant past. </p><ol><li><p>__ (1984): Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddmore seem like happy-go-lucky guys, but these are cold, hard military contractors. Between evading the Environmental Protection Agency, charging exorbitant rates for apparition captures, and summoning a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, the merry band shows a Zoul-haunted New York that their for-profit services are far more reliable than those of the Big Apple’s wholly inept government. At the same time, the Ghostbusters were providing 1980s audiences with a cinematic version of what would later become the very real Blackwater--and what would be the anti-government, privatize-everything narrative of the twenty-first century. </p> </li> <li><p>__ (1988): Though the 1980s was setting the stage for the rise of anti-government politics today, it was also creating the Palin-esque “rogue” to conveniently explain the good things government undeniably accomplishes. Hitting the silver screen just a few years after Ollie North’s rogue triumphalism, John McClane became the ’80s most famous of this “rogue” archetype--a government employee who becomes a hero specifically by defying his police superiors and rescuing hostages from the twin threat of terrorism <em>and</em> his boss’s bureaucratic clumsiness. This message is so clear in <em>Die Hard</em>, that in one memorable scene, McClane is yelling at one police lieutenant that the government has become “part of the problem.” <em>Die Hard</em>, like almost every national politician today, says government can only work if it gets out of the way of the rogues, mavericks, and rule-breakers within its own midst. </p> </li> <li><p>__ (1985): “Sir, do we get to win this time?” So begins the second--and most culturally important--installment of the Rambo series. The question was a direct rip-off of Ronald Reagan’s insistence that when it came to the loss in Vietnam, America had been too “afraid to let them win”--them, of course, being the troops. The theory embedded in this refrain is simple: If only meddling politicians and a weak-kneed public had deferred to the Pentagon, then we would have won the conflict in Southeast Asia. Repeated ad nauseum since the 1980s, the “let them win” idea now defines our modern discussion of war. If only we let the Pentagon’s Rambos do whatever they want with no question or oversight whatsoever, then we can decisively conclude the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…and we can win the neverending “War on Terror.” </p> </li> <li><p>__ (1982): Before the 2008 presidential campaign devolved into cartoonish media portrayals of the palatable “post-racial” Barack Obama and his allegedly unpalatable “overly racial” pastor Jeremiah Wright, there was <em>Rocky III</em> more explicitly outlining this binary and bigoted portrayal of African Americans. Here was Rocky Balboa as the determined but slightly ignorant stand-in for White Middle America. Surveying the diverse landscape, the Italian Stallion could see only two kinds of black people—on one side the suave, smooth, post-racial Apollo Creed, and on the other side the enraged, animalistic Clubber Lang. Rocky thus gravitated to the former, and reflexively feared the latter, essentially summarizing twenty-first-century White America’s often over-simplistic and bigoted attitudes toward the black community today. </p> </li> <li><p>__ (1983): This college reunion flick from Lawrence Kasdan is hilarious, morose, and seemingly nostalgic for the halcyon days of the past; but powerfully propagandistic in its negative framing of the 1960s. Over the course of the film’s weekend, character after character berates the 1960s as an overly decadent age that may have been rooted in idealism, but was fundamentally destined to fail. Sound familiar? Of course it does. The 1980s-created narrative of the Bad Sixties can still be found in everything from national Tea Party protests to never-ending culture-war battles on local school boards. The message is always the same: If only America can emulate the Big Chillers and get past its Sixties immaturity and liberalism, everything will be A-okay. </p> </li></ol><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Sirota (The Uprising) ushers readers back to the era of big money and bigger hair, the yuppie and the Gipper to show how the 1980s transformed—and continues to influence—America's culture and politics. As Carter's presidency began to crumble in 1978, a revival of back-to-the-'50s theater, television, and film productions (Grease, Happy Days, La Bamba) overtook grittier 1960s imagery of "urbanity, ethnicity and strife" and came to define the Reagan era in a country eager to forget—or unwilling to learn from—the failure of Vietnam. Sirota argues that the combination of Reagan, the "candidate of nostalgia"; hypermilitarist movies that re-demonized communism; and sophisticated marketing campaigns glorifying the cult of the individual led to our current culture's narcissism and obsessive pursuit of wealth and celebrity. In his effort to fit current trends to his overriding thesis, Sirota occasionally makes some sweeping statements, such as claiming the military's public relations campaign was so successful that Americans "never dare question" the military, ignoring the numerous anti–Iraq War protests and the outrage over the Abu Ghraib photographs. But the many of his arguments are well informed and sparkle with wit and irreverence. (Mar.) <br>(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p>

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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Chang (Bad Samaritans) takes on the "free-market ideologues," the stentorian voices in economic thought and, in his analysis, the engineers of the recent financial catastrophe. Free market orthodoxy has inserted its tenterhooks into almost every economy in the world--over the past three decades, most countries have privatized state-owned industrial and financial firms, deregulated finance and industry, liberalized international trade and investments, and reduced income taxes and welfare payments. But these policies have unleashed bubbles and ever increasing income disparity. How can we dig ourselves out? By examining the many myths in the narrative of free-market liberalism, crucially that the name is itself a misnomer: there is nothing "free" about a market where wages are largely politically determined; that greater macroeconomic stability has not made the world economy more stable; and a more educated population itself won't make a country richer. An advocate of big, active government and capitalism as distinct from a free market, Chang presents an enlightening précis of modern economic thought--and all the places it's gone wrong, urging us to act in order to completely rebuild the world economy: "This will some readers uncomfortable... it is time to get uncomfortable." (Jan.) (c) <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“Chang presents an enlightening précis of modern economic thought—and all the places it’s gone wrong, urging us to act in order to completely rebuild the world economy: ‘This will [make] some readers uncomfortable…[;] it is time to get uncomfortable.’”<strong><em>—Publishers Weekly</em></strong></p><p>__ </p><p>“Myth-busting and nicely-written collection of essays”<strong><em>—Independent</em></strong> <strong>(UK)</strong></p><p>__ </p><p>“Shaking Economics 101 assumptions to the core … Eminently accessible, with a clearly liberal (or at least anticonservative) bent, but with surprises along the way—for one, the thought that markets need to become less rather than more efficient.”<strong>—_Kirkus Reviews_</strong></p><p>__ </p><p>“For anyone who wants to understand capitalism not as economists or politicians have pictured it but as it actually operates, this book will be invaluable.”<strong>—John Gray, <em>Observer</em> (UK)</strong></p><hr><p>“A lively, accessible and provocative book.”<strong>—_Sunday Times_ (UK)</strong></p><p>“For 40 years, I have worked as a journalist and trained thousands of other journalists from my former perches as a University of Missouri Journalism School professor and as executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors. I have written newspaper articles, magazine features and entire books with heavy doses of economics policy and business behavior. I wish the book <em>23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism</em> had been available when I was a rookie; I would have been more alert to the hands-off-business catechism by which Americans are relentlessly indoctrinated.”—<strong>Steven Weinberg, <em>Remapping Debate</em></strong></p><p><strong>__</strong> </p>

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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Chang's detailed, thorough book puts another theoretical nail in the coffin of free trade and unbridled capitalism. Chang illustrates a vast array of contradictions and hypocrisies spouted by the neoliberal agenda (sometimes known as neo-conservative in the U.S.) to completely deregulate developing governments. Looking at the history of capitalism, he reveals how often free trade has failed where protectionism has benefited many of the richer countries today including the U.S. and U.K. Bond, who has his work cut out for him with Chang's long, technical and fact-laden work, does a good job of emphasis and pacing. But staying atop the tidal wave of information and complex connections in Chang's writing may require listening to the audiobook in small chunks or listening to some sections more than once. Bond's smooth but stern delivery proves a useful companion. Simultaneous release with the Bloomsbury hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 12). <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“A well-researched and readable case against free-trade orthodoxy.” _<strong>—Business Week</strong>_</p><p>“A lively addition to the protectionist side of the debate…well written and far more serious than most anti-globalization gibberish.” _<strong>— New York Sun</strong>_</p><p>“Bookstore shelves are loaded with offerings by economists and commentators seeking to explain, in accessible prose, why free-trade-style globalization is desirable and even indispensable for countries the world over. Now comes the best riposte from the critics that I have seen. Readers who are leery of open-market orthodoxy will rejoice at the cogency of Bad Samaritans. Ha-Joon Chang has the credentials -- he's on the economics faculty at Cambridge University -- and the storytelling skill to make a well-informed, engaging case against the dogma propagated by globalization's cheerleaders. Believers in free trade will find that the book forces them to recalibrate and maybe even backpedal a bit….Chang's book deserves a wide readership for illuminating the need for humility about the virtues of private markets and free trade, especially in the developing world.” <strong>—Paul Blustein, <em>Washington</em>_ Post_</strong></p><p> “Lucid, deeply informed, and enlivened with striking illustrations, this penetrating study could be entitled “economics in the real world.” Chang reveals the yawning gap between standard doctrines concerning economic development and what really has taken place from the origins of the industrial revolution until today.  His incisive analysis shows how, and why, prescriptions based on reigning doctrines have caused severe harm, particularly to the most vulnerable and defenseless, and are likely to continue to do so.  He goes on to provide sensible and constructive proposals, solidly based on economic theory and historical evidence, as to how the global economy could be redesigned to proceed on a far more humane and civilized course.  And his warnings of what might happen if corrective action is not taken are grim and apt.” <strong>– Noam Chomsky</strong></p><p>“A smart, lively, and provocative book that offers us compelling new ways of looking at globalization.” —<strong>Joseph Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel Laureate in Economics</strong></p><p>“I recommend this book to people who have any interest in these issues—i.e. everyone.” <em></em>—Bob Geldof <br><em></em><br>“Every orthodoxy needs effective critics. Ha-Joon Chang is probably the world’s most effective critic of globalization. He does not deny the benefits to developing countries of integration into the world economy. But he draws on the lessons of history to argue that they must be allowed to integrate on their own terms.” <strong>—Martin Wolf, <em>Financial Times</em>, author of </strong>_<strong>Why Globalization Works</strong>   </p><p>_“This is a marvelous book. Well researched, panoramic in its scope and beautifully written, <em>Bad Samaritans</em> is the perfect riposte to devotees of a one-size-fits-all model of growth and globalisation. I strongly urge you to read it.”—<strong>Larry Elliott, economics editor, the <em>Guardian</em></strong></p>

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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>An eye-opening look at the phenomenon of school and workplace shootings in America, Going Postal explores the rage-murder phenomenon that has plagued - and baffled - America for the last three decades, and offers some provocative answers to the oft-asked question, "Why?" By juxtaposing the historical place of rage in America with the social climate that has existed since the 1980s - when Reaganomics began to widen the gap between executive and average-worker earnings - the author crafts a convincing argument that these schoolyard and office massacres can be seen as modern-day slave rebellions. He presents many fascinating and unexpected cases in detail. Like slave rebellions, these massacres are doomed, gory, sometimes even inadvertently comic, and grossly misunderstood. Taking up where Bowling for Columbine left off, this book seeks to set these murders in their proper context and thereby reveal their meaning.</p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>I Will Teach You To Be Richis a practical approach delivered with a non-judgemental style based on the four pillars of personal finance ' banking, saving, budgeting and investing ' and the wealth-building ideas of personal entrepreneurship.Witty, entertaining, wise and practical, Ramit Sethi explains how to automate your money flow - i.e. earn while sleeping, why your new best friend should be the taxman and how to beat banks and credit cards at the fee game. How do you negotiate a raise? How can you manage student loans? And can you still enjoy your daily latte and buy that iPhone? Sethi's 6-week plan shows you how:Week 1: Optimise your credit cards and learn exactly what to say to get fees waived Week 2: Set up no-fee, high-interest bank accounts that won't cost you Week 3: Open investment accounts even with a small amount of money Week 4: Figure out how much you're spending. And then learn how to make your money go where you want it to go! Week 5: Automate your new infrastructure to make your accounts play nicely together Week 6: Why investing isn't the same as picking stocks - how to get the most out of the market with very little work.</p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Still relatively fresh out of J-school but already a hot scribe at the New York <em>Gazette</em>, Henry Parker (from Pinter's <em>The Mark</em>) files another hair-raising story in the Big Bad Apple. This time the juicy journo's on the trail of the Boy, a sharpshooting serial killer who kills his prey using an antique Winchester 1873, the gun that won the West. The first victim is celebrity diva Athena Paradis, and the killer leaves a note quoting a piece of Henry's. Henry's research reveals a bizarre connection between Henry and a long-dead outlaw of the American West, and, as victims pile up, Henry wonders if the Boy is out for vengeance. The intrepid journalist must think fast on his feet to stop him, even if it means asking for help from a rival <em>Dispatch</em> journalist, the lovely Paulina Cole. Tension mounts, bullets fly and Pinter's cool fusion of a new outlaw with blood ties to an old one hits the mark. The resolution is a ripsnorter, leaving thrill fans ready for the next Henry Parker newsflash. <em>(Mar.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"A suspenseful and shocking tale that will leave readers clamoring for the next Henry Parker novel." -- <em>Library Journal</em>  </p><p>"One of the best thrillers of the year." -- <em>Press &amp; Sun-Bulletin</em>  </p><p>"Readers who enjoyed Pinter's first book, THE MARK, won't be disappointed with his followup." -- <em>Romantic Times</em></p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Pinter's ambitious third Henry Parker novel opens as Daniel Linwood, 11, suddenly reappears on his family's front porch five years after being kidnapped. Parker, a young but seasoned <em>New York Gazette</em> reporter, snags an exclusive interview with Daniel and his overjoyed mother. But Daniel appears to have no recollection of his missing years, and something he absentmindedly says in the interview deeply rattles Parker—convincing him there's a sinister undercurrent to this feel-good story. Working with his ex-girlfriend, Legal Aid Society lawyer Amanda, Parker meets resistance from law enforcement officials, a popular politician and even his own editor. What he gradually uncovers involves seemingly disparate individuals with unexpected motives, desperate to keep their activities a secret. Parker's first-person voice dominates: it lists between Parker as gritty, desensitized journalist and young romantic who wants little more than to spend the rest of his life with one woman. The emotional dichotomy makes Parker a captivating and complex protagonist, one whose pithy observations about New York are dead on. Pinter's chunky plot, rapid pacing and credible dialogue do the rest. <em>(Aug.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Ambitious...Parker is a captivating and complex protagonist...Pinter's chunky plot, rapid pacing and credible dialogue do the rest." -- <em>Publishers Weekly</em></p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>While Henry Parker and Jack O'Donnell get some much needed rest, two killers are on the move and before the night's done their plan will be completed.</p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Am I my brother's keeper?</p><p>If I'd known I had a brother, I might have been. But he's dead—shot point-blank in a rat-hole apartment, wasted by hunger and heroin. Stephen Gaines, a man with whom I shared nothing…except a father.</p><p>For some reason this stranger who shared my blood came to me for help…and I blew him off thinking he was just some junkie. Now I'm forced to question everything I ever knew…and figure out why this man was murdered in cold blood.</p><p>All I can do for Stephen Gaines now is find his killer—and with the help of Amanda Davies uncover the whole, hard truth. If it means tracking down a vicious drug kingpin—who may or may not exist—then so be it…. </p><h3>Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.</h3><p>At nine in the morning, the offices of the <em>New York Gazette </em>are quiet. Reporters read the morning papers, prepare to call their sources and blink off hangovers over steaming cups of coffee. Today, however, it was a different kind of quiet. The kind of quiet where everyone seems to be waiting for the roof to cave in, or the floor to suddenly give way and fall out from under you.</p><p>Every morning I would swipe my ID card, wave hello to the security guards who'd gradually warmed to me over the years and wait for the elevator with lots of other people who also looked like they'd rather still be in bed. I would exit the elevators at the twelfth floor, passing the receptionist, always too busy to acknowledge staffers, and walk to my desk. The offices of the <em>New York Gazette </em>towered over Rockefeller Center, giving me a panoramic view of one of the busiest streets in the city. Yet when I navigated the mess of chairs and debris and entered the cubicle farm on this day, I noticed the other journalists who shared my row were nowhere to be seen. There were no faces hunched far too close to computer screens, no whispered chats about the umpteenth death knell sounded for our industry. No reporters haggling over verb usage and tense like it was a matter of life or death. It seemed every day across our industry there were more layoffs, more cutbacks, more reasons to fear the end. And it had been drilled repeatedly into us by our corporate overlords and the media that if the sickle wasn't already lancing the air above our heads, it was in the midst of being lowered into place.</p><p>I couldn't worry about that. Still a few years shy of thirty, it had been my lifelong ambition to work at a prestigious, thriving newspaper. And while one could debate whether the <em>Gazette </em>was thriving, in my short time here I'd had the chance to work alongside some of the greats, including my idol, Jack O'Donnell.</p><p>I'd also been wanted for murder and targeted by a deranged serial killer. Hey, who doesn't complain about their job sometimes?</p><p>Externally, you might think I looked the same. Internally, though, I was a different man. A man learns who he is when his life, innocence and freedom are challenged. I was stronger than I ever knew I could be, but deep down I wished I hadn't needed to find that out.</p><p>When I navigated the maze of empty desks to arrive at mine, I put my coffee and muffin on the desk, sat down and debated whether to ignore the silence or see what was causing the sound vacuum. I reached for the plastic tab on my coffee, but immediately thought twice. To ignore the strange stillness of the office would have gone against every bone in my body, and probably triggered some sort of spontaneous combustion. Curiosity not only killed the cat, but made my breakfast grow cold. So I stood back up and took a lap around the news floor to see what the hell was going on.</p><p>I didn't have to go far.</p><p>A group of half a dozen reporters were huddled around the desk of Evelyn Waterstone, the <em>Gazette's </em>Metro editor. They were talking under their breaths, worried looks in their eyes. I wondered if there were going to be layoffs. If some of my colleagues—perhaps even myself—would be out of a job. That Evelyn's desk had seemingly replaced the watercooler as center of office scoop was itself noteworthy. Evelyn stayed as far away from gossip as those who gossiped stayed away from her. Whatever happened had to be big enough to pique her interest. I walked up casually, inserting myself into the conversation through proximity alone.</p><p>Evelyn Waterstone was a short, squat woman whose haircut resembled a well-manicured putting green— only this particular green was gray with age—and whose broad shoulders would have been a welcome addition to most offensive lines. She was a disciplinarian in the gentlest sense of the word. It took several years for her to warm up to me, but when my work ethic and the quality of my reporting became clear, Evelyn began to grudgingly show me a modicum of respect. Still, I don't think you'd ever see the two of us tossing back a couple of longnecks after hours. I made an effort never to stop by her desk unless I had a specific question, and Evelyn never stormed by mine unless I'd made some terrible grammatical mistake that, to Evelyn, was only slightly worse of an offense than treason.</p><p>"Morning, Parker," Evelyn said. She held a black thermos between her fleshy hands, and took a long, drawn-out sip. "Another beautiful day at your friendly local newspaper." She sniffed the air. "Glad to see you've begun showering regularly again."</p><p>"Morning, Evelyn," I said, nodded to the other reporters, who offered the same.</p><p>"You hear about Rourke?" she said. I hadn't, and told her so. She raised her arms dramatically as if recounting some heroic tale. "This paper's most controversial sportswriter—who incidentally once told a linebacker he would ‘whup his ass like a donkey'—got mugged yesterday on his way home from the office. Well, I shouldn't say mugged, because the guy didn't take any money, but Frank ended up getting the donkey side of the whupping."</p><p>"Really?" I said, incredulous. "Rourke?" I had no love lost for Frank Rourke, considering the man had once left a bag of excrement on my desk—but the man's swagger seemed to come from years of always being the one guy who was able to leave the fight on his own two feet.</p><p>"Seems some hothead took umbrage to Frank's calling the Yankees ‘the most poorly run organization since FEMA.' Some disgruntled asshat from the Bronx. Anyway, this guy waits outside of the office until Frank leaves. Then he yells, ‘Yo, Rourke!' Frank turns his head, and gets a sockful of quarters up against the side of his temple."</p><p>"That's terrible, is he okay?"</p><p>"Concussion, he'll be fine. Police arrested the fan, I'm just hoping he might have damaged the area of Frank's brain that makes him such an asshole. Maybe he'll have one of those <em>Regarding Henry </em>kind of epiphanies and come back a better man."</p><p>"That's probably too much to expect."</p><p>"We can dream, Parker. We can dream."</p><p>As we chatted, I noticed another group of reporters huddled together in the hallway looking like they'd just been told management had decided to restructure by throwing them out the twelfth floor windows. The group shifted nervously, whispering amongst themselves. Never wanting to be the last one in the know, I approached, said, "I thought Frank was going to be fine, what gives?"</p><p>Jonas Levinson, the <em>Gazette's </em>science editor, said, "Frank is the least of our concerns. Though, as a matter of fact, something has died this morning. Something to be mourned as long as we're employed by this godforsaken newspaper. As of today, good taste, my friend, has kicked the bucket."</p><p>I stared at Jonas, waiting for some kind of an explanation. Levinson was a tall man, balding, who wore a different bow tie to the office every day. He very seldom exaggerated his feelings, so at Jonas's remark a flock of butterflies began to flutter around in my stomach.</p><p>"I'm not following you," I said to Jonas. "Good taste? Jonas, care to explain?"</p><p>"Just follow the eyes, Parker," Jonas said. "Follow the eyes."</p><p>I opened my mouth to ask another question, but then I realized what he was saying. The eyes of every member of our group were focused on two individuals making their way across the <em>Gazette's </em>floor. They were stopping at every desk, popping into each office for a few moments. It looks like some sort of introduction ritual was taking place.</p><p>Immediately this struck me as odd. I'd never met another employee during a walkaround, and had not received one myself. The fact that this one person was being given the grand tour made it clear he was someone the brass wanted to coddle.</p><p>One of the two men I recognized immediately as Wallace Langston, editor in chief. Wallace was in his midfifties, lean with a neatly trimmed beard. His brown hair was flecked with gray, and he had the slightly bent posture of a man who'd spent the majority of his years hunched over a keyboard. Wallace had been a staunch supporter of mine in the years I'd been employed by the paper, and even though now more than ever he was feeling the crunch of his corporate masters insisting on higher profit margins, he knew what it took to print good news. If not my idol, he was a good, loyal mentor.</p><p>"Is he," I said, "introducing someone around the office?"</p><p>"That is precisely what it looks like," Jonas replied.</p><p>Evelyn walked up and said, "I never met a damn person until my first staff meeting. I got as much of an introduction as my stove has to a cooking pot."</p><p>"Me, neither," I said. When I started at the <em>Gazette, </em>I didn't know anybody other than Jack O'Donnell. Jack was my boyhood idol, the man most aspiring reporters dreamt of becoming. He and I had grown close over the last few years, but recently he'd lost his battle with the bottle and left the <em>Gazette. </em>I hadn't spoken to him in a few months. I'd tried his home, his cell phone, even walked by his Clinton apartment a few times, but never got a hold of the man. It was clear Jack needed some time alone with his demons.</p><p>Ironically the first reporter I'd met was a woman named Paulina Cole. We worked next to each other when I first started at the <em>Gazette. </em>Soon she left for a job at the rival <em>Dispatch, </em>where through a combination of balls, brass and more balls she'd become one of the most talked-about writers in the city. Paulina was cold, calculating, ruthless and, worst of all, damn smart. She knew what people wanted to read—namely, anything where if you squeezed a page, dirt or juice came out— and gave it to them. She was part of the reason Jack had left the <em>Gazette. </em>She'd managed to pay off numerous people in order to discover the extent of Jack's drinking habits, and then ran a front-page article (with unflattering pictures) depicting Jack as the ... </p>

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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>A young man is found murdered, his bones crushed nearly to dust before his body was dumped into New York's East River</p><p>In New York there are hundreds of murders a year, but this one is different. Somebody is sending a message. And shockingly, the victim has ties to my brother, Stephen Gaines, recently murdered by an elusive drug lord known only as the Fury.</p><p>For years this kingpin has been shrouded in darkness. Stephen was executed just as he was about to shed some light. Working alongside my mentor, Jack O'Donnell, I'm going to find the truth behind this blood-soaked curtain. But the more we reveal, the more we realize just how dark the Fury's plans are. And that no matter how brutal the violence has been, we haven't seen anything yet…. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Jason Pinter clearly knows a thing or two about what makes a good book - having worked in the editorial departments of major New York publishing houses. All that expertise is clear to see in his stunning Henry Parker series. </p>

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<h3>Review</h3><p>""A book about client service that is so practical it's almost embarrassing. Solomon offers unique perspectives that help clients, creatives, and, oh yeah, account people do their jobs better, resulting in more creative marketing.” <strong>—Tom Monahan, President, Before &amp; After, and author of <em>The Do-it-Yourself Lobotomy</em></strong></p><p>“It is said that great clients get great work, but it doesn’t magically happen!  Without great account people daily bridging the gap between client and agency demands, it’s virtually impossible.  This is a must read book for all who have chosen to engage in the fine art of serving clients -  truly a fresh dose of account management inspiration!” <strong>—Karen M. Jones, Senior Vice President, Corporate and Marketing Communications, DHL Express</strong></p><p>“With all the time and money it takes to win new business, professional services firms would be smarter to improve client service to retain more clients. Reading and practicing Robert Solomon’s advice is guaranteed to help.” <strong>—Joanne Davis, Joanne Davis Consulting</strong></p><p>“As a career-long ‘client,’ I’ve been on a continuous search for the ideal agency account person. Robert Solomon…and students of his text…would clearly fit the bill. CMOs want insights, partnership, creative team leadership and results. <em>The Art of Client Service</em> teaches how to deliver them all.” <strong>—Sara Lipson, Chief Customer Sciences Officer, Market &amp; Business Intelligence TIAA-CREF</strong></p><p>“This book is essential reading for anyone in the creative services profession. Marketing disciplines may change with the times, but the art of client service is timeless—and Robert has captured its essence.” <strong>—Barry Wacksman, Executive Vice President, Chief Growth Officer R/GA</strong></p><p>“In addition to sage, prescriptive advice, Robert demonstrates the importance of checking oneself with a good, hard look in the mirror—to learn lessons, and strive for greatness in the craft of managing client relationships.” <strong>—Sarah Fay, President, Isobar U.S.</strong></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>If you work with clients in any industry, <em>The Art of Client Service</em> is for you. If you work in an advertising or marketing agency, then this book is indispensable.</p><p>Distilling decades of experience, advertising executive Robert Solomon has compiled the definitive resource for advertising and marketing account executives: a fast-reading, pocket-size, actionable checklist of 58 essential ideas to help client service professionals improve their account management strategy and skills. </p><p>Now fully updated and revised, <em>The Art of Client Service </em>is geared to the entire account team -- copy writers, art directors, and planners, researchers, media executives, support staff -- anyone who works with clients. With brevity, levity, and clarity, Solomon recounts both successes and failures, and uses them to formulate fast-reading, actionable tips, including:</p><ul> <li>     Know when to look it up; know when to make it up. (#7) </li> <li>     What happens when I screw up? (#51) </li> <li>     Respect what it takes to do great creative. (#19) </li> <li>     In a high-tech world, be low-tech (#46) </li> <li>     Be brief, be bright, be gone. (#31) </li> <li>     How to write a letter of proposal (#44) </li> <li>     The Zen of PowerPoint. (#45) </li></ul><p>You'll also find new chapters on technology in advertising, the changing role of client service in an increasingly high-tech era, and an updated bibliography of essential reading. </p>


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Kaplan's Get Your M.B.A. Part-Time is written for the professional interested in balancing work and schoo. It outlines the entire process---from selecting the right program to graduation. This straightforward guide covers: * NEW! A chapter on getting your MBA online* Tips to help readers find the program that best meets their career goals and scheduling needs* Step-by-step explanation of the application process* Strategies for financing an M.B.A.* Advice from current business students and recent graduates


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<h3>Review</h3><p><strong>Advance Praise for <em>See Me After Class</em>:</strong></p><p>“Sadly, new teachers are often thrown in to the sea of teaching and are left to ""sink or swim."" All too often, they are swallowed up and lost to the profession forever. This gem of a book (along with an anti-anxiety drug prescription and the film CHALK) will serve as one of those little life-saver ring things - not only will it keep rookie’s heads above water... it will have them swimming with the best in no time."" <strong>—The filmmakers of Chalk</strong></p><p>""Covers all the bases for the beginning teacher from a practical, no-nonsense approach."" —<strong>Nancy Polette, 30-year educator, presenter, and author of over 150 professional books for teachers</strong></p><p>""This book uses humor to shed light on how to deal with the difficult times of being a rookie teacher. It should be a required read for all pre-service and beginning teachers."" <strong>—Dr. Lawrence Orihuela, founder of Teaching &amp; Learning Inc</strong></p><p>“Sarcastic humor mixed with gentle, tangible advice…. a quick and easy read by someone who doesn’t take herself too seriously. I wish I could give every teacher I supervise a copy of this book.” <strong>—Abena Osei, program director (Breakthrough Collaborative)</strong></p><p>“Roxanna Elden demonstrates great insight into the teaching profession and the many obstacles new teachers encounter. Teachers will find the answers to many of their questions and, most importantly, will find that they are not alone in experiencing this great profession of ours. I especially enjoyed the shared stories from those educators that have been in the profession for the long haul. Great job!” <strong>—Herminia V. Martinez, lifelong educator and retired Assistant Superintendent for Instruction and Support Services, Edinburg CISD (Edinburg, Texas) </strong></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>This is the book that will save rookies’ souls when they lose the strength to save their classrooms. With tales from more than one hundred veterans from across the country, teachers everywhere will find themselves laughing, maybe crying, and definitely taking notes. Readers at the toughest schools will be relieved to find a resource that deals specifically with their struggles instead of insisting that all teaching situations are the same. This is the book that will keep the great teachers of the future from quitting before they become great. </p><p>Many new teachers have been waiting for someone to break the “stay positive!” code and talk about the parts of the job that make teachers question their career choices. While other books cover the eyes of readers to keep from scaring them, this one asks teachers to be brutally honest about how tough teaching truly is and whether the rewards are still worth it. The answer is yes. </p><p>From the author: </p><p>I have never understood why so many books for the new teacher show apples and paper airplanes on their covers. In six years of teaching, no one has ever given me an apple. Any snacks students have offered me have come from vending machines, and teachers are not allowed to accept unwrapped food anyway. I have never seen a paper airplane, either. This generation of students knows that crumpled-up-paper balls are faster to make and easier to aim. Some unlucky teachers have had books thrown at them. In at least one case, a teacher was hit in the back with chunks of plaster from her crumbling classroom wall. </p><p>Even without serious discipline problems, new teachers often feel like failures. Not only do they take on all the issues plaguing the school system, they cause many of their own problems because of their inexperience. As a beginner, I sat through countless workshops listening to the heartwarming success stories of others. Then, carrying home piles of un-graded papers the night before report card day, all I could think was, “How did these poor students get stuck with a teacher like me?” </p><p>I also remember some generous, experienced coworkers who shared their own first-year horror stories. One described a parent who threatened to “f___ (her) up” during class time. Another talked about a hard-working student who was tormented every time he turned in an assignment, and a third confided that she was so overwhelmed she repeatedly turned in the same lesson plan. These stories were not inspirational, but during my first year they kept me sane. These were people who had become top-notch professionals. If their start had been so rocky, maybe there was hope for me. </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>_ _</p><p>"The Rules of Life: A Personal Code for Living a Better, Happier, More Successful Life" is a motivational guide from Richard Templar, as he explains how to live life with your head held high, understanding how to live and work with the many different personalities around you. With plenty of common sense and simple wisdom, "The Rules of Life" will motivate and inspire many a reader.”</p><p>--<strong>Midwest Book Review </strong></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Some people seem more contented, fulfilled, enthusiastic about life... just plain happier. Is it genes? Money? No. It’s the choices they make, how they behave, every single day. Now, Richard Templar brings together the rules that happy, successful people follow: small, simple, common-sense, doable rules that can change your life!</p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>"Dr. Seethaler has written an excellent book for any interested student of science. She answers great questions about the world around us in this fascinating book. As a high school science teacher, I encounter many of these from my own students. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who has pondered questions starting with ls"how,rs" ls"what,rs" or ls"why.rs"" Ernest James Lo, Science Teacher, Woodside High School, Woodside, CA Prepare to Be Fascinated! Why does the flu change every year? bull; What makes glue sticky? bull; What causes out-of-body experiences? bull; Are all brands of gas the same? bull; Will adult stem cells work as well as embryonic stem cells? bull; Is one "horsepower" really equal to the power of one horse? bull; Why canrs"t you sneeze with your eyes open? bull; How much does a cremated body weigh? These are just a few of the fascinating science and health questions real people have asked top science writer andSan Diego Union-Tribune columnist Sherry Seethaler.Curious Folks Askbrings together 162 of her best answersall crystal-clear, accurate, quick, and a pleasure to read. Seethaler is one of this generationrs"s best science explainers, and it shows: Every answer is accurate, fun to read, and distilled to a single page or less! Want to know how canned air workshellip;or nuclear bombs? What causes goose bumps, earwax, dandruff, headaches? Whether itrs"s healthy to crack your knuckles, drink decaf, eat chocolate? What it costs to run all those LED lights around your house? Itrs"s all hereand a whole lot more! Your bodyrs"s oddities: knees to knuckles, itches to sneezes Surprising facts about how your body grows and works Our ingenious inventions The past, present, and future of our relentless human inventiveness Pesky pathogens: viruses, bacteria, and prions How they keep outsmarting us, and why itrs"s so hard to stay healthy Common chemical concoctions The science behind the everyday products that have transformed our lives Uniquely human: how we got here, how wers"re unique New lessons from genetics, archaeology, and evolutionary biology</p>


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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>"Among those who write regularly about Dylan, <em></em>Wilentz possesses the rare virtues of modesty, nuance, and lucidity<strong>, and for that </strong>he should be celebrated and treasured<strong>....Wilentz is very, very good on the actual music.  In fact, the centerpiece of his book is a vivid look at the 'Blonde on Blonde' sessions, during which the musicians teased and groped their way toward the album's 'thin, wild mercury sound,' in Dylan's famous description."—Bruce Handy in </strong>_The New York Times Book Review  </p><p>_<em></em>"In this <strong>often revelatory</strong> new study, Wilentz locates Dylan's work in the context of some surprising influences....The greatest gift for Dylan fans, however, is Wilentz's detailed account of the making of 1966's 'Blonde on Blonde'....Unless Dylan himself writes about it in the fabled <em>Chronicles: Volume Two</em>, this is <strong>the definitive word on the creation of his greatest album.</strong>"—Andy Green in <strong><em>Rolling Stone</em></strong>  </p><p>"_Bob Dylan in America,_ a new biography of the singer-songwriter by distinguished cultural [and] political historian Sean Wilentz, gives an <strong>enjoyably thorough, convincing</strong> explanation of why Dylan's new music has gone on finding new audiences ever since he burst upon the New York folk scene of the early 1960s, fresh from the iron range of northern Minnesorta and ferociously ambitious for his art. It's an <strong>extraordinary, resonant intersection of subject and biographer.</strong>...Where <strong>Wilentz excels</strong> is in teasing out the origins of Dylan's artistic impulses, the context in which they arose and flowered, the multiple sources of his art."—Tim Rutten in _<strong>The Los Angeles Times</strong>_  </p><p>"Another book about Bob Dylan!  Is there any more to be said?  The answer is, of course, yes, and <em></em>who better to say it than Sean Wilentz, a Princeton professor of American history?...<strong>What this book finally does -- this is me, not Wilentz -- is establish Dylan as the 20th century's Walt Whitman.  Like Whitman he sings the songs of America in the conviction that they can be said in no other way.  And, like Whitman, he commits himself to travelling the roads of America, looking and remembering.  From the shelves full of Dylan books this and one other -- Christopher Ricks's <em>Dylan's Visions of Sin</em> -- are </strong>the ones to read<strong>.  This is also one to look at: </strong>the pictures are cunningly well chosen<strong>."—Bryan Appleyard in</strong> _The Sunday Times (UK)<br>_<em></em><br>"Like many <strong>a quirkily brilliant music critic</strong>...Mr. Wilentz chooses pet aspects of his subject's career and then invests them with the requisite importance....Mr. Wilentz's vast knowledge of Dylan performances touchingly conveys his nearly lifelong reverence for his subject."—Janet Maslin in _<strong>The New York Times</strong>_  </p><p>ADVANCE PRAISE FOR <em>BOB DYLAN IN AMERICA</em>  </p><p>"A panoramic vision of Bob Dylan, his music, his shifting place in American culture, from multiple angles. In fact, reading Sean Wilentz’ <em>Bob Dylan in America</em> is as thrilling and surprising as listening to a great Dylan song."<br>—<strong>Martin Scorsese</strong>  </p><p>"All the American connections that Wilentz draws to explain the appearance of Dylan’s music are fascinating, particularly at the outset the connection to Aaron Copland. The writing is strong, the thinking is strong – the book is dense and strong everywhere you look."<br>—<strong>Philip Roth</strong>  </p><p>"Unlike so many Dylan-writer-wannabes and phony ‘encyclopedia’ compilers, Sean Wilentz makes me feel he was in the room when he chronicles events that I participated in. Finally a breath of fresh words founded in hardcore, intelligent research."<br>—<em></em>Al Kooper  </p><p><em></em>"This should have been impossible. Writing about Bob Dylan's music, and fitting it into the great crazy quilt of American culture, Sean Wilentz sews a whole new critical fabric, part history, part close analysis, and all heart. What he writes, as well as anyone ever has, helps us enlarge Dylan's music by reckoning its roots, its influences, its allusive spiritual contours. This isn't <em>Cliff Notes</em> or footnotes or any kind of academic exercise. It's not a critic chinning on the high bar. It's one artist meeting another, kickstarting a dazzling conversation."<br><strong>—Jay Cocks</strong>, screenwriter for THE AGE OF INNOCENCE and THE GANGS OF NEW YORK  </p><p>"Sean Wilentz is one of the few great American historians. His political and social histories of American Democracy are masterful and magisterial. In this work, he turns his attention to the artistic genius of Bob Dylan – and the result is a masterpiece of cultural history that tells us much about who we have been and who we are." <br><strong>—Cornel West</strong>, Class of 1943 University Professor in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University  </p><p>"Sean Wilentz makes us think about Bob Dylan’s half-century of work in new ways. Combining a scholar’s depth with a sense of mischief appropriate to the subject, Wilentz hears new associations in famous songs and sends us back to listen to Dylan’s less familiar music with fresh insights. By focusing on the parts of Dylan’s canon that most move him, Wilentz gets<br>straight to the heart of the matter. If you thought there was nothing new to say about Bob Dylan’s impact on America, this book will make you think twice." <br><strong>—Bill Flanagan</strong>, author of A&amp;R and EVENING’S EMPIRE<strong> </strong>and Editorial Director, MTV Networks.  </p><p>"Sean Wilentz’s beautiful book sets a new standard for the cultural history of popular music in America. He loves the music and he loves America, but his loves do not blind him, they open his eyes. In Wilentz’s erudite and lively account, Dylan’s music, and folk music, and rock music, are all indelibly woven into the whole story of an entire country. This book is chocked with new contexts for old pleasures. There are surprises and illuminations on almost every page. A great historian has written a history of the culture that formed him. Like Dylan, Wilentz is a deep and probing American voice. Bob Dylan’s America is Bob Dylan’s good luck, and ours. It is an extraordinary affirmation of singing and strumming and feeling and learning and believing." <br><em></em>—Leon Wieseltier<br><em></em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>One of America’s finest historians shows us how Bob Dylan, one of the country’s greatest and most enduring artists, still surprises and moves us after all these years. </strong>  </p><p>Growing up in Greenwich Village, Sean Wilentz discov­ered the music of Bob Dylan as a young teenager; almost half a century later, he revisits Dylan’s work with the skills of an eminent American historian as well as the passion of a fan. Drawn in part from Wilentz’s essays as “historian in residence” of Dylan’s official website, <em>Bob Dylan in America </em>is a unique blend of fact, interpretation, and affinity—a book that, much like its subject, shifts gears and changes shape as the occasion warrants.   </p><p>Beginning with his explosion onto the scene in 1961, this book follows Dylan as he continues to develop a body of musical and literary work unique in our cultural history. Wilentz’s approach places Dylan’s music in the context of its time, including the early influences of Popular Front ideology and Beat aesthetics, and offers a larger critical appreciation of Dylan as both a song­writer and performer down to the present. Wilentz has had unprecedented access to studio tapes, recording notes, rare photographs, and other materials, all of which allow him to tell Dylan’s story and that of such masterpieces as <em>Blonde on Blonde </em>with an unprecedented authenticity and richness.   </p><p><em>Bob Dylan in America</em>—groundbreaking, comprehensive, totally absorbing—is the result of an author and a subject brilliantly met. </p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>Across the Universe</em> challenges readers to consider the impact of unchecked power, blind trust, and the ability of one dissenting voice to make a difference.-- <em>Seira Wilson</em></p><p><strong>Preview the Spacecraft in <em>Across the Universe</em></strong> <br /><strong>(Click on Images to Enlarge)</strong>   </p><p>In <em>Across the Universe</em>, Godspeed is a vast spaceship, the size of a small county. The lives of its passengers are severely regulated. And people are divided into three categories--Feeders, Shippers, and Keepers--represented by the three levels of the ship. </p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Gr 10 Up-Imagine leaving everything behind in order to be with the people you love, only to be left with nothing. Amy and her parents have been cryogenically frozen to be awakened in 300 years when their spaceship reaches the planet they will colonize. Unfortunately, Amy is unfrozen 50 years too soon. Her parents are too critical to the colony to awaken early, so by the time she sees them again, she will be older than they are. The culture on the spaceship is unfamiliar and everyone Amy meets is either an emotionless drone or lives in the mental ward. But there is little time for her to grieve the loss of her former life, because someone is thawing other colonists and leaving them to die. In order to find the murderer, Amy must join forces with Elder, the teenage future leader of the ship. But all of the inhabitants onboard have been told lies, and there are secrets that even Elder doesn't know. This compelling novel is told in alternating chapters from Amy's and Elder's points of view. Amy is a contemporary character in a fish-out-of-water situation, and her grief and fear are realistically depicted. And as Elder learns the truth behind the ship, he begins to experience a coming-of-age that is convincingly written. The mystery will propel readers along, and the budding romance between Amy and Elder set against the backdrop of a dystopian society will appeal even to readers who don't enjoy science fiction. Revis's thrilling debut novel hints at more great books to come.-Heather M. Campbell, formerly at Philip S. Miller Library, Castle Rock, CO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong> Amazon Exclusive: Barbara Bradley Hagerty on <em>Fingerprints of God</em></strong>   </p><p>It took me more than a decade to muster the courage to write <em>Fingerprints of God.</em> The seed was planted on June 10, 1995, when I was reporting a story for the <em>Los Angeles Times</em> Sunday Magazine about evangelical churches. Kathy Younge and I were sitting on a bench outside Saddleback Church. She told me that her melanoma had returned after a remission, and she believed that the disease was not meant to kill her, but to give her a transcendent purpose. As we talked, the night darkened to indigo. The streetlamp next to our bench cast a perfect circle around us, creating the eerie sense that we were actors on a stage. The temperature had dropped into the 50's. I was shivering but pinned to the spot, riveted by Kathy and her serene faith.   </p><p>My body responded before my brain, alerting me to some unseen change. My skin began to tingle and my heart started beating a little faster. Imperceptibly at first, the air around us thickened; it grew warmer and heavier, as if someone had moved into the circle and was breathing on us. I glanced at Kathy. She had fallen silent mid-sentence. Neither of us spoke. Gradually, and ever so gently, I felt engulfed by a presence I could feel but could not touch. After a minute, although it seemed longer, the presence melted away. We sat quietly, while I waited for the earth to steady itself. I was too spooked to continue with the interview, and a few minutes later I was driving back to my hotel room.   </p><p>But I could not shake the questions. Was that experience a delusion, or was it real? Is there a spiritual reality that exists beyond our everyday physical world? Is there evidence of God? Not just people’s beliefs, but hard, scientific evidence? And most basic of all: Is there more than this? For a decade, I looked for books that would answer these questions. Finding none, I decided to investigate the only way I knew how – as a journalist.  </p><p>In 2006, I took a year-long leave of absence from National Public Radio to research the emerging science of spirituality. I spoke with dozens of prominent scientists who are bushwhacking through this controversial territory, often drawing the ire or ridicule of their colleagues who believe that everything can be explained by material means. In the meantime, I took a journey peppered with surprises and ridiculous situations. I traveled to Canada and donned the "God helmet" to see if activating my temporal lobes would unleash an encounter with the "divine." I attended to a peyote ceremony (although, like our former president, I barely ingested) and visited Johns Hopkins University in search of a chemical that would manufacture a mystical experience. I arranged for a minister to have his brain scanned while he prayed at the University of Pennsylvania, and tried to see if I could physically change my own brain through two weeks of meditation at the University of Wisconsin.   </p><p>And I spent endless hours with people who had enjoyed dramatic spiritual experiences. Some had had spontaneous mystical experiences, right out of the blue. Some transcendent moments were triggered by a trauma, others by drugs, or epilepsy, or near-death experiences. Some people spent hundreds of hours in prayer and meditation to cultivate the ability to connect with the divine.   </p><p>I confess that my exploration was not an entirely clinical. I was raised a Christian Scientist, and while I now consider myself a serious mainstream Christian, I have always believed in the presence and power of God. At the beginning I nursed a nagging concern that perhaps this God business is just a ruse, self medication in the face of certain death. I fretted that science would prove that all mystery, all transcendent experience, can be boiled down to brain chemistry and genetics.   </p><p>What I found—well, you’ll have to see. But I can say this: By the end of my research, I had redefined God and my view of reality. And perhaps at the end of the book, you will too. </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. In her first book, National Public Radio correspondent Hagerty acts as a tour guide through the rocky terrain of scientists who study religious experience. Is there a so-called God gene? Why do some people have mystical experiences while others never see the so-called light? Right up front, Hagerty reveals that this is not an entirely objective exercise. As a Christian, she wants to understand her own mystical encounter with the divine and why she believes when others do not. Yet to each interview, whether with a world-renowned neuroscientist or a back-road mystic, she brings a suitably skeptical eye. Along the way, she manages to explain some pretty cutting-edge science—psychoneuroimmunology, anyone?—and unravel some people's pretty hard-to-comprehend religious experiences without sacrificing depth or complexity. Then, with equal aplomb, she dances off to peyote ceremonies, church services and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The real beauty of this book lies in watching Hagerty gracefully balance her own trust in faith and science and, in the end, come down with one foot planted firmly in both. <em>(May)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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<div><h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> You can always count on Cathie Linz to create a feisty, nonstereotypical librarian in her stories, and this book’s heroine, Megan West, is no exception. Coming from a family who owns the largest private-investigation firm in Chicago, Megan figures she knows all the clan’s secrets. Wrong. At her cousin’s Las Vegas wedding, not only does Megan find out that a supposedly single man is married, she also accidentally discovers that her own mother, whom she’s been told is dead, is actually very much alive and kicking, and everyone else in the family knows it. Feeling as though she’s suffered the ultimate betrayal, Megan sets out with Detective Logan Doyle to uncover the whole truth about her mother. Their spur-of-the-moment journey takes them to odd locations, including a Chicken Ranch–like house of ill repute and an almost-ghost town, where they meet up with eccentric characters. Linz (Mad, Bad and Blonde, 2010; Smart Girls Think Twice, 2009; Big Girls Don’t Cry, 2007) has written another fast-paced romantic comedy with just the right amount of heartfelt emotion. --Shelley Mosley </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>A shocking announcement at her cousin's Vegas wedding sends retro- loving librarian Megan West on a whirlwind tour across Nevada with brash cop Logan Doyle. It's the gamble-and perhaps love affair-of a lifetime... </p>

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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Grisham's recent slump continues with another subpar effort whose plot and characters, none of whom are painted in shades of gray, aren't able to support an earnest protest against the death penalty. In 2007, almost on the eve of the execution of Donté Drumm, an African-American college football star, for the 1998 murder of a white cheerleader whose body was never found, Travis Boyette, a creepy multiple sex offender, confesses that he's guilty of the crime to Kansas minister Keith Schroeder. With Drumm's legal options dwindling fast and with the threat of civil unrest in his Texas hometown if the execution proceeds, Schroeder battles to convince Boyette to go public with the truth--and to persuade the condemned man's attorney that Boyette's story needs to be taken seriously. While the action progresses with a certain grim realism, Schroeder's superficial responses to the issues raised undercut the impact. As with The Appeal, the author's passionate views on serious flaws in the justice system don't translate well into fiction. (Oct.) <br>(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p><em></em>"_The Confession_ is the kind of grab-a-reader-by-the-shoulders suspense story that demands to be inhaled as quickly as possible. But it's also a superb work of social criticism in the literary troublemaker tradition of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle....Brilliant"--_Washington Post<br>_  </p><p>"Grisham is the master of the legal thriller."--_USA Today_  </p><p>NO ONE KEEPS YOU IN SUSPENSE LIKE AMERICA’S FAVORITE STORYTELLER <em></em>  </p><p>“The secrets of Grisham’s success are no secret at all. There are two of them: his pacing, which ranges from fast to breakneck, and his Theme—little guy takes on big conspiracy with the little guy getting the win in the end.” <em>—Time</em> magazine  </p><p>“The law, by its nature, creates drama, and a new Grisham promises us an inside look at the dirty machineries of process and power, with plenty of entertainment” —_Los Angeles Times_  </p><p>“With every new book I appreciate John Grisham a little more, for his feisty critiques of the legal system, his compassion for the underdog, and his willingness to strike out in new directions.” —_Entertainment Weekly _  </p><p>“John Grisham is about as good a storyteller as we’ve got in the United States these days.” —_The New York Times Book Review_  </p><p>“Grisham is a marvelous storyteller who works readers the way a good trial lawyer works a jury.” —_Philadelphia Inquirer_  </p><p> “A mighty narrative talent and an unerring eye for hot-button issues.” —_Chicago Sun-Times_  </p><p>“A legal literary legend.” —_USA Today_</p>

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<div><p>Rising sous-chef Kelly Matlock's sudden collapse at work is a wake-up call. Disillusioned and burned out, she's retreated to her sister Jillian's house in Virgin River to rest and reevaluate.</p><p>Puttering in Jill's garden and cooking with her heirloom vegetables is wonderful, but Virgin River is a far cry from San Francisco. Kelly's starting to feel a little <i>too</i> unmotivated...until she meets Lief Holbrook. The handsome widower looks more like a lumberjack than a sophisticated screenwriter—a combination Kelly finds irresistible. But less appealing is Lief's rebellious stepdaughter, Courtney. She's the reason they moved from L.A., but Courtney's finding plenty of trouble even in Virgin River.</p><p>Kelly's never fallen for a guy with such serious baggage, but some things are worth fighting for. Besides, a bratty teenager can't be any worse than a histrionic chef...right?</p></div>


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<div><h3>Review</h3><p><strong>CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR JAMES PATTERSON</strong>  </p><p>"The Man Who Can't Miss." (<strong><em>Time</em></strong> _<strong>Lev Grossman</strong>_ )  </p><p>"When it comes to constructing a harrowing plot, author James Patterson can turn a screw all right." (<strong><em>New York Daily News</em></strong> )  </p><p>"Patterson's novels are sleek entertainment machines, the Porsches of commercial fiction, expertly engineered and lightning fast." (<strong><em>Publishers Weekly</em></strong> ) </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>James Bond and Jason Bourne have just been topped! A battle for the world is set into unstoppable motion and Hays Baker is the only one who can save it.</strong> Hays Baker and his wife Lizbeth possess super-human strength, extraordinary intelligence, stunning looks, a sex life to die for, and two beautiful children. Of course they do--they're Elites, endowed at birth with the very best that the world can offer. The only problem in their perfect world: humans and their toys!  </p><p><strong>The one with the most toys--_dies_</strong>  </p><p>The top operative for the Agency of Change, Hays has just won the fiercest battle of his career. He has been praised by the President, and is a national hero. But before he can savor his triumph, he receives an unbelievable shock that overturns everything he thought was true. Suddenly Hays is on the other side of the gun, forced to leave his perfect family and fight for his life.   </p><p>Now a hunted fugitive, Hays is thrown into a life he never dreamed possible--fighting to <em>save</em> humans everywhere from extinction. He enlists all of his training to uncover the truth that will save millions of lives--maybe even his own. James Patterson's <em>Toys</em> is a thriller on a hyper plane--with a hero who rivals both James Bond and Jason Bourne.<strong> </strong></p>

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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>WHO DO YOU LOVE?</strong>  </p><p>One question, a split-second decision, and Brian Darby lies dead on the kitchen floor. His wife, state police trooper Tessa Leoni, claims to have shot him in self-defense, and bears the bruises to back up her tale. For veteran detective D. D. Warren it should be an open-and-shut case. But where is their six-year-old daughter?  </p><p><strong> AND HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO . . . </strong>  </p><p>As the homicide investigation ratchets into a frantic statewide search for a missing child, D. D. Warren must partner with former lover Bobby Dodge to break through the blue wall of police brotherhood, seeking to understand the inner workings of a trooper’s mind while also unearthing family secrets. Would a trained police officer truly shoot her own husband? And would a mother harm her own child?  </p><p><strong> . . . TO SAVE HER?</strong>  </p><p>For Tessa Leoni, the worst has not yet happened. She is walking a tightrope, with nowhere to turn, no one to trust, as the clock ticks down to a terrifying deadline. She has one goal in sight, and she will use every ounce of her training, every trick at her disposal, to do what must be done. No sacrifice is too great, no action unthinkable. A mother knows who she loves. And all others will be made to pay.  </p><p>_<strong> Love you more . . . </strong>_</p><p><strong>A Letter from Author Lisa Gardner</strong>   </p><p>True confession time: for a woman who makes her living writing extremely diabolical suspense novels, I have no stomach for gore. Scary movies? Can’t watch them. Most of the crime shows on prime time? Egads, no way! Haunted houses? My husband has had to carry me out. It’s embarrassing but true. </p><p>So when I first received the invitation to conduct research at the famed Body Farm at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, I didn’t know what to do with myself. As a forensics aficionado and thriller author, I just had to visit. A chance to learn first-hand how to search for buried remains? Or how to establish time of death for skeletal remains? Or the amount of forensic evidence that can still be retrieved from cremated bones? Sign me up! </p><p>On the other hand, this would involve walking the fabled Death’s Acre, which generally features several hundred decomposing bodies. I had to consider not just what I was going to see, but what I was going to smell, touch, feel. The squeamish mom in me worried I wouldn’t be able to take it. And no one wants to be the one who barfs in front of trained professionals. </p><p>What’s a girl gonna do? Of course I went. </p><p>The Anthropological Research Facility, aka the Body Farm, was founded in the early ‘80s by Dr. William Bass. Up until then, the discovery of decomposed remains often led to a time of death plus or minus several years. Obviously, this complicated the homicide investigation. Dr. Bass’s solution: bury a body, see how long it took to skelatonize, and scientifically establish a rate of decomp. </p><p>Of course, many variables immediately came into play: buried or unburied, clothed or clothed, hot humid conditions, cold frosty conditions, animal activity, insect activity, etc., etc. In the end, Dr. Bass couldn’t bury one body, he needed hundreds. Some donations were unclaimed remains from the ME’s office. Hundreds of others are directed donations from people who wanted to contribute to the advancement of science after their death. </p><p>This kind of generosity makes Death’s Acre less a macabre wooded plot and more like hallowed ground. Instead of listening to anthropologists merely analyze body parts, I heard stories of people and families, of victims and criminal prosecutions, of crafty murderers and even craftier forensics experts. I learned of stories told in bone. </p><p>Interestingly enough, the more the head anthropologist Dr. Lee Jantz humanized the remains we studied, the more bearable I found the sights and smells to be. When I cradled the feather-light cranial plate of a newborn infant in my hand, I could both marvel as its rose petal size and feel the weight of one parent’s heart-breaking contribution. I was both mesmerized by the skeleton collection, which took up endless rows of metal shelves, and amazed by how a scientist such as Dr. Jantz could pick up a single piece of cremated bone and tell you the person’s gender, approximate age, chronic health conditions and probable occupation. </p><p>Bones, I learned, aren’t just body parts, but an organic record of who we are, what we did, where we lived, and often, how we died. And in the right hands, bones allow the dead to speak. Think a murderer can cover his tracks with a burn barrel and lighter fluid? Think again. Think you can thwart time of death by freezing remains? Nope. Think you can get away with murder? Thanks to forensic anthropologists such as Dr. Jantz, not likely. </p><p>I came to the Body Farm expecting to be immersed in death, and instead, found a new appreciation for life. And while my family still refuses to let me tell stories about my research over dinner, I had a great time working with the anthropologists on my March 2011 release Love You More. Just remember, when you come to the key scene in the snowy woods—you’ll know which one I’m talking about—I worked for that scene. </p><p>I walked Death’s Acre, and I never threw up. </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Near the start of Thriller Award–winner Gardner's gripping fifth novel featuring Boston PD Sgt. Det. D.D. Warren (after Live to Tell), D.D.'s former partner and one-time lover, Det. Bobby Dodge, of the Massachusetts State Police, asks her to look into what appears to be a clear-cut homicide case. The evidence suggests that Tessa Leoni, a state trooper colleague of Bobby's, shot and killed her abusive husband, Brian Darby, who may have kidnapped her six-year-old daughter, Sophie. But Tessa won't talk about her bruises, her husband, or what might have happened to her child. D.D. examines every detail about the family, while Tessa uses her skills to manipulate the investigation. From Tessa's point of view, we learn about her and Brian's courtship, his affection for Sophie, and how the marriage began to disintegrate. Gardner sprinkles plenty of clues and inventive twists to keep readers off-kilter as the suspense builds to a realistic, jaw-dropping finale. Author tour. (Mar.) <br>(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p>

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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Aleksandr Berinksi is a Russian biochemist in the U.S. on a visa that is about to expire. Marriage will allow him to stay—marriage to Julia Conrad. If Julia's going to save her Seattle-based company, she needs <em>him</em> as much as he needs her. There's a <em>Groom Wanted</em> in Julia's life. And not just any groom!</p><p>A billboard on the side of a Seattle road is common enough—but one advertising for a bride? It's Chase Goodwin's solution to the problem of finding a wife <em>quickly,</em> a wife to bring home to Alaska. Lesley Campbell has her own reasons for responding…and in no time she's the <em>Bride Wanted</em> in Chase's life! </p><h3>Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.</h3><p>Julia Conrad wasn't a patient woman at the best of times. She paced her office, repeatedly circling her high-gloss black-lacquer-and-brass desk. She felt so helpless. She should've gone to Citizenship and Immigration Services with Jerry rather than wait for their decision.</p><p>Rubbing her palms together, she retracted the thought. She was a wreck and the Immigration people would have instantly picked up on that and it could hurt their case. She couldn't help being anxious. The future of the company rested on the outcome of today's hearing. Ultimately she was the one responsible for the welfare of Conrad Industries, the business her grandfather had started thirty years earlier.</p><p>In an effort to calm herself she stared out the window. The weather seemed to echo her mood. There was a ceiling of black clouds, thunder roared and a flash of lightning briefly brightened the room. The lights flickered.</p><p>Julia's reflection was mirrored in the window and she frowned, mesmerized by the unexpected sight of herself.</p><p>Her dark hair was swept back from her face and secured with a gold clasp. She wore a dark suit with a pale gray blouse, which—in her view, anyway—conveyed tasteful refinement. She <em>looked </em>cool, calm and collected, but inside she was a mass of tension and nerves. At thirty she had a pleasant face when she smiled, but she hadn't been doing much of that lately. Not in the past three years. Her cheekbones were high, her jaw strong, but it was her eyes that told the story. Her eyes revealed vulnerability and pain.</p><p>The image of herself distressed Julia and she hurriedly glanced away. Sighing, she circled her desk once more, silently praying for patience. She was determined to get the company back on its feet, to overcome the odds they faced. Jerry, her brother, had worked with her, sacrificing his personal life the way she had hers. They'd met with a handful of small successes. And now <em>this.</em></p><p>Both Julia and Jerry were determined to revive Conrad Industries. Julia owed her father that much. Jerry had shown such faith in her by volunteering his services. If their situations were reversed, she wasn't sure she would've been so forgiving. But her brother had stuck by her through all the turmoil.</p><p>Slowly she lowered her gaze, disturbed by that revelation. However, she didn't have the time or the inclination to worry about it. If she ever needed a cool head and a cooler heart, it was now. Two years' worth of innovative research was about to be lost because they'd allowed the fate of the company to hinge on the experiments and ideas of one man. Aleksandr Berinski was a brilliant Russian biochemist. Jerry had met him some years earlier while traveling in Europe and convinced Julia he was the answer to their problems. Her brother was right; Alek's ideas would revolutionize the paint industry. Bringing him to the United States had been a bold move on their part, but she hadn't been sorry. Not once.</p><p>Hiring Aleksandr Berinski from Russia and moving him to Seattle—it was the biggest risk Conrad Industries had ever taken. Now the fate of the company rested in the hands of a hard-nosed official.</p><p>Julia wondered again if she should've attended the hearing at the district office of Citizenship and Immigration. She'd done everything within her power to make sure Aleksandr's visa would be extended. She'd written a letter explaining his importance to the company and included documentation to prove that Aleksandr Berinski was a man of distinct merit and exceptional ability.</p><p>Jerry, who was a very good corporate attorney, had spent weeks building their case. Professional certifications, affidavits, a copy of Aleksandr's diploma and letters of reference filled Jerry's briefcase.</p><p>Her brother had told her there could be problems. It was often difficult to renew an H-2 visa, the type Aleksandr had been granted when he'd entered the United States. The H-2 is one of temporary employment. He'd warned her that if it looked as though employment might become permanent, then Immigration and the Labor Department would be reluctant to extend the visa.</p><p>On top of all that, the case had been assigned to a particularly difficult bureaucrat. Jerry had warned her that the agent hearing their case might decide Alek had applied for the temporary visa knowing the job was really permanent and refuse to grant an extension on principle.</p><p>She checked her watch again and exhaled with impatience. Only a few minutes had passed. Annoyed with herself for the uncharacteristic display of anxiety, she sat down on her white leather chair. Everything was neatly arranged on the polished black desk. A small marble pen stand was next to the phone. The address and appointment books were perfectly aligned with everything else. Behind the desk stood her computer table, the company website pulled up, its logo prominent. Julia liked to keep her office and her world under control.</p><p>When her phone rang, the sound caught her off guard. She grabbed the receiver. "Jerry?"</p><p>"Sis," Jerry's voice greeted her. "I'm on my cell. I thought you'd want to know the decision as soon as possible."</p><p>"Yes, please."</p><p>"I'm afraid it didn't go as well as we'd hoped. They've decided not to renew Alek's visa."</p><p>His words felt like a kick in the stomach. She closed her eyes and waited until the shock had passed. It wasn't as if she hadn't known the likelihood of this verdict. The fact that Aleksandr had no proof of a permanent residence in Russia didn't help. In the eyes of Immigration Services that was a red light indicating he didn't intend to return. Furthermore, she and Jerry were dealing with a large, complex bureaucracy. In a fit of worry, Julia had tried to contact the agency herself, reason with them. She'd spent nearly an hour on the phone and hadn't spoken to a single person. She was forced to listen to one recording after another. Press a number on the phone, listen, press another one, then another. She quickly became lost in a hopeless tangle of instructions and messages.</p><p>"When will he have to leave?"</p><p>"By the end of the week, when his current visa expires."</p><p>"That soon?"</p><p>"I'm afraid so."</p><p>"Jerry, what are we going to do?"</p><p>"I'll talk to you about it as soon as we get back to the office," her brother said in reassuring tones. "Don't worry, I've got a contingency plan."</p><p>Nice of him to mention it now, Julia mused. He might've said something this morning and saved her all this grief.</p><p>Ten minutes later, her intercom buzzed; her assistant announced that Jerry was in her outer office. Julia asked Virginia to send him in and waited, standing by the window.</p><p>Jerry entered and Aleksandr Berinski followed. Although Aleksandr had been working for Conrad Industries for nearly two years, she'd only talked to him a handful of times. Even those conversations had been brief. But she'd read his weekly reports and been excited by the progress he was making. If he was allowed to continue, Julia didn't doubt that his innovations would put Conrad Industries back on a firm financial footing.</p><p>Julia and Jerry, but primarily Julia, had taken on the impossible task of resurrecting the family business, literally from the ashes. Three years before, the plant and adjacent warehouse had been severely damaged by fire; fortunately, it hadn't spread to the lab and the offices. Because of the rebuilding they'd had to do, she'd decided the line of paints Aleksandr was developing would be called Phoenix.</p><p>To be so close to success and lose it all now was more than she could bear. For three long, frustrating years, she'd hung on to the business by wheeling and dealing, making trades and promises.</p><p>Being aggressive and hardworking had come naturally to her. Jerry possessed the same determination and had been a constant help. If she was cold and sometimes ruthless, she credited it to Roger Stanhope. She'd needed to be, but Julia didn't have any more tricks up her sleeve once Aleksandr returned to Russia.</p><p>She feared that losing the business would be a fatal blow to her grandmother. No one knew better than Julia how fragile Ruth's health had become these past few months.</p><p>"You said you have a contingency plan." She spoke crisply, the sound of her steps muffled by the thick wheat-colored carpet as she stalked back to her desk. She leaned forward and averted her gaze from Aleksandr's.</p><p>The man disturbed her in ways she didn't understand. He was tall and lanky with impeccable manners. His face wasn't handsome the way Roger's had been, but rawboned and lean. His eyes were dark, the brows arched slightly, and in him she read strength and character. Unwillingly she found her own eyes drawn to his, and the shadow of a smile crept across Aleksandr's face. She focused her attention on Jerry.</p><p>"There is one way," her brother said, with obvious reluctance.</p><p>"This isn't the time to play guessing games. Tell me what you're thinking," she snapped, hardly believing he could be holding something back. Jerry knew as well as she did what kind of predicament the company was in.</p><p>Her brother set down his briefcase and motioned toward the leather chair. "Perhaps you should take a seat."</p><p>"Me?" She noted that his voice was strained, which surprised her almost as much as his request.</p><p>"You, too, Alek," Jerry advised as he moved to the opposite end of her office.</p><p>Julia turned toward him and tried to read his features in the gloom of late afternoon. The storm had darkened the sky, stationing shadows around the room until it resembled a dungeon, Julia thought.</p><p>"Whatever you have to say, please say it, Jerry. You've never worried about phrasing before."</p><p>Jerry's eyes traveled from Julia to Aleksandr, and she saw that his cheeks were flushed. He sighed. "There's only one legal way I know to keep Aleksandr in the country." Slowly he leveled his gaze on Julia. "You could marry him."</p><p>"I was hoping you'd stop by and see me." Julia's grandmother, Ruth Conrad, spoke softly, stretching out one hand. She was sitting up in bed, her thin white hair arrang... </p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>Room</em> is rife with moments of hope and beauty, and the dogged determination to live, even in the most desolate circumstances. A stunning and original novel of survival in captivity, readers who enter <em>Room</em> will leave staggered, as though, like Jack, they are seeing the world for the very first time. <em>--Lynette Mong</em>  </p><hr /><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Five-year-old Jack and his Ma live and eat and play and sleep in one room--an 11×11-foot space that is their prison--captives of the terrifying man Jack calls Old Nick. But as Jack grows older and more curious, it becomes clear that the room will not be able to hold him and Ma forever. Michal Friedman shines as Jack; her narration is haunting and compelling in its every inflection and tone. The voice she creates for Jack is so convincing, listeners may even mistake her for an actual child. Her powerful performance is complemented by Robert Petcoff's sinister Old Nick, and Ellen Archer's portrayal of resourceful Ma, whose gentle voice is infused with patience, terror, and hope. The chemistry between the players creates a gem of an audiobook that will haunt listeners long after the story's end. A Little, Brown hardcover (Reviews, July 12). (Sept.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>When single attorney Steven Creed becomes guardian of an orphaned five-year-old boy, he trades his big-city law firm for a ranch near his McKettrick kin in the close-knit community of Stone Creek, Arizona. Taking care of little Matt and fixing up his run-down ranch house with its old barn loosens something tightly wound inside him. But when Steven takes on the pro bono defense of a local teen, he meets his match in the opposing counsel—beautiful, by-the-book county prosecutor Melissa O'Ballivan. It'll take one grieving little boy, a sweet adopted dog and a woman who never expected to win any man's heart to make this Creed in Stone Creek know he's truly found home. </p><h3>Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.</h3><p>Some instinct—or maybe just a stir of a breeze—awakened Steven Creed; he sat up in bed, took a fraction of a moment to orient himself to unfamiliar surroundings. One by one, the mental tumblers clicked into place:</p><p>Room 6. Happy Wanderer Motel and Campground. Stone Creek, Arizona.</p><p>The door stood open to the fresh high-country air, which was crisply cool on this early June night, but not cold, and the little boy—Steven's newly adopted son— sat on the cement step outside. A bundle—probably his favorite toy, a plush skunk named Fred, rolled up in his blanket—rested beside him, and the boy's tiny frame was rimmed in an aura of silvery-gold moonlight.</p><p>Something tightened in Steven's throat at the poignancy of the sight.</p><p>Poor kid. It wasn't hard to guess who he was waiting for. Matt was small, with his dad's dark hair and his mother's violet eyes, and he was exceptionally intelligent—maybe even gifted—but he was still only five years old.</p><p>How could he be expected to comprehend that his folks, Zack and Jillie St. John, were gone for good? That they wouldn't be coming to pick him up, no matter how hard he hoped or how many stars he wished on, that night or any other.</p><p>Steven's eyes burned, and he had to swallow the hard ache that rose in his throat.</p><p>Jillie had succumbed to a particularly virulent form of breast cancer a year and a half ago, and Zack had only lasted a few months before the grief dragged him under, too—however indirectly.</p><p>"Hey, Tex," Steven said, trying to sound casual as he sat up on the thin, lumpy mattress of the foldout sofa— he'd given the bed to the child when they checked in that evening. Steven shoved a hand through his own dark blond hair. "What's the trouble?" His voice was hoarse. "Can't sleep?"</p><p>Matt looked back at him, shook his head instead of answering aloud.</p><p>He looked even smaller than usual, sitting there in the expanse of that wide-open doorway.</p><p>Steven rolled out of bed, shirtless and barefoot, wearing a pair of black sweatpants that had seen better days.</p><p>He crossed the scuffed linoleum floor, stepped over the threshold and sat down beside Matt on the step, interlacing his fingers, letting his elbows rest on his knees. There was enough of a chill in the air to raise goose bumps wherever his skin was bare, so he figured Matt had to be cold, too, sitting there in his cotton pajamas. With a sigh, Steven squinted to make out the winding sparkle of the nearby creek, sprinkled in starlight, edged by oak trees, with night-purple mountains for a backdrop.</p><p>Matt leaned into him a little, a gesture that further melted Steven's already-bruised heart.</p><p>Carefully, Steven put an arm around the boy, to lend not only reassurance, but warmth, too. "Having second thoughts about turning rancher this late in your life?" he teased, thinking he couldn't have loved Matt any more if he'd been his own child, instead of his best friend's.</p><p>In the morning, Steven would attend the closing over at the Cattleman's Bank, and sign the papers making him the legal owner of a fifty-acre spread with a sturdy though run-down two-story house and a good well but not much else going for it. The rickety fences had toppled over years ago, defeated by decades of heavy snow in winter and pounding rain come springtime, and the barn was unsalvageable. Yet something about the place had reached out to him and grabbed hold, just the same.</p><p>The small ranch had been a home once, and it could be one again, with a lot of elbow grease—and a serious chunk of change. Fortunately, money wasn't a problem for Steven, which wasn't to say there weren't plenty of other things to chap his figurative hide.</p><p>Sometimes, he felt just as lost as Matt did.</p><p>Matt's mouth quirked up at one side in a flimsy attempt at a smile, all the more touching because of the obvious effort involved. "I'm <em>only </em>five years and three months old," he said, in belated reply to Steven's question, in that oddly mature way of his. "It's not late in my life, because my life just got <em>started." </em>The little guy had skipped the baby-talk stage entirely; he hadn't even <em>tried </em>to talk until he was past two, but he'd spoken in full sentences from then on.</p><p>"Five, huh?" Steven teased, raising one eyebrow. "If you weren't so short, I'd say you were lying about your age. Come on, admit it—you're really somebody's grandfather, posing as a kid."</p><p>The joke, a well-worn favorite, fell flat. Matt's small shoulders moved with the force of his sigh, and he leaned a little more heavily into Steven's side.</p><p>"Feeling lonesome?" Steven asked, after clearing his throat.</p><p>Matt nodded, looking up at Steven. His eyes were huge and luminous in the predawn darkness. "I need a dog," the boy announced solemnly.</p><p>Steven chuckled, ruffled Matt's hair, gleaming dark as a raven's wing in the night. Relief swelled inside him, flailed behind his chest wall like a living thing doing its best to escape. A dog was something he could manage.</p><p>"Soon as we're settled," he promised, "we'll visit the animal shelter and pick out a mutt."</p><p>"Do they have ponies at the shelter, too?" The question cheered Steven; Matt was pushing the envelope, so to speak, and that had to be a good sign.</p><p>They'd already had the pony discussion—repeatedly.</p><p>"You know the deal, Tex," he reminded the little boy quietly. "The fences need to be replaced before we can keep horses, and the barn, too."</p><p>Matt sighed again, deeply. "That might take a long time," he lamented, "since you'll be working in town every day."</p><p>Steven fully intended to settle down in Stone Creek, build a normal life for his young charge and for himself. And to him, <em>normal </em>meant showing up somewhere on weekday mornings and putting in eight hours—whether he needed the paycheck or not.</p><p>He'd had to fight just to get through high school, let alone prelaw in college, and then earn the graduate degree that had qualified him to take the bar exam—a frustrating variety of learning disorders had all but crippled him early in his life. Although they'd been corrected, thanks to several perceptive teachers, he'd had a lot of catching up to do.</p><p>Still felt as if he was scrambling, some of the time.</p><p>Steven ruffled Matt's hair. "Yep," he agreed. "I'll be working."</p><p>"What about me? Where will I be when you're gone?"</p><p>They'd already covered that ground, numerous times, but after everything—and everybody—the little guy had lost over the past couple of years, it wasn't surprising that he needed almost constant reassurance. "You'll be in day camp," Steven said. "Until you start first grade in the fall, anyhow."</p><p>Matt's chin jutted out a little way, the angle obstinate and so reminiscent of Zack that the backs of Steven's eyes stung again. Zack St. John had been his best friend since middle school, a popular athlete, excellent student and all-around good guy. Losing Jillie had been a terrible blow, knocking Zack for the proverbial loop—he'd gone wild and finally died when, driving too fast down a narrow mountain road, he'd lost control somehow and laid his motorcycle down.</p><p>"Couldn't I just go to the office with you?" the boy asked, his voice even smaller than he was. "I might not like day camp. Anyhow, it's summer. Who goes to day camp in <em>summer?</em>"</p><p>Steven sighed and got to his feet. "Lots of kids do," he said. "And you might just wind up thinking day camp is the greatest thing since 3D TV." He extended a hand. "Come on, Tex. Let's get you back to bed. Tomorrow might be a long day, and you'll need your rest."</p><p>Matt reached for the stuffed skunk, and wound up in the now-tattered blanket he always kept close at hand. Jillie had knitted that herself, especially to bring her and Zack's infant son home from the hospital in, but the thing had been through some serious wear-and-tear since then.</p><p>Steven supposed that Matt was too old to be so attached to a baby blanket, but he didn't have the heart to take it away.</p><p>So he watched as the little boy got to his feet, trundled back inside, took a brief detour to the bathroom and then stood in the middle of the small room, looking forlorn.</p><p>"Can I sleep with you?" he asked. "Just for tonight?"</p><p>Steven tossed back the covers on the sofa bed and stretched out, resigned to the knowledge that he probably wouldn't close his eyes again before the morning was right on top of him. "Yeah," he said. "Hop in."</p><p>Matt scrambled onto the bad mattress and squirmed a little before settling down.</p><p>Steven stretched to switch off the lamp on the bedside table.</p><p>"Thanks," Matt said, in the darkness.</p><p>"You're welcome," Steven replied.</p><p>"I dreamed about Mom and Dad," Matt confided, after a silence so long that Steven thought he'd gone to sleep. "They were coming to get me, in a big red truck. That's why I was sitting on the step when you woke up. It took me a little while to figure out that it was just a dream."</p><p>"I thought it was something like that," Steven said, when he could trust himself to speak.</p><p>"I really miss them," Matt admitted.</p><p>"Me, too," Steven agreed, his voice hoarse.</p><p>"But we're gonna make it, right? You and me? Because we're pardners till the end?"</p><p>Steven swallowed, blinked a couple of times, glad of the darkness. "Pardners till the end," he promised. "And we are definitely gonna make it."</p><p>"Okay," Matt yawned, apparently satisfied. For the moment, anyhow. He'd ask again soon. "'Night."</p><p>"'Night," Steven replied.</p><p>Soon, the child was asleep.</p><p>Eventually, though he would have bet it wouldn't happen, Steven slept, too.</p><p>Melissa O'Ballivan whipped her prized convertible roadster, cherry-red with plenty of gleaming chrome, up to the curb in front of the Sunflower Bakery and Cafe in downtown Stone Creek, shifted into Neutral and shoved open the door to jump out.</p><p>It was... </p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. The murder of Julia Jules Farentino's father creates a bond with her younger half-sister, Shaylee Stillman in this juicy creep-a-thon from bestseller Jackson (_Chosen to Die_). That bond is tested years later when 17-year-old Shaylee is shipped off to Blue Rock Academy, an Oregon school in the middle of no-damned-where for at-risk teens. Run by iron-fisted Rev. Tobias Lynch, Blue Rock recently had a student, Lauren Conway, go missing and a female teacher dismissed for inappropriate behavior with a student. When Jules takes a teaching position at Blue Rock to rescue Shay, she discovers Cooper Trent, her ex-boyfriend, working there as an undercover PI looking into Lauren's disappearance. The scary suicide strangulation of Shay's roommate and the murder of her teaching assistant boyfriend throw the school into further uproar. Meanwhile, the Leader, the head of a secret cult at Blue Rock, plots more mayhem. This campy cool thriller builds to a surprising cliffhanger ending. <em>(Apr.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Ever since her father was stabbed to death in a home invasion, Julia “Jules” Farentino has been plagued by nightmares. Her half-sister, Shaylee, now seventeen, has had her own difficulties since the tragedy, earning a rap sheet for drug use, theft, and vandalism. Still, when Jules learns of her mother’s decision to send Shay to an elite boarding school in Oregon, she’s skeptical. Blue Rock Academy has a reputation for turning wayward kids around — but one of its students went missing a few months earlier and her body has never been found. On impulse, Jules applies for a teaching job at the Academy. Shortly before Jules arrives, a student is found hanged, another near death, and a hysterical Shay believes it’s murder. Then another girl is found dead. There’s no doubt something sinister is at hand. And Jules has become the next target of a bloodthirsty killer without limits, without remorse, without mercy… </p>

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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>Little Bee</em> is that what happens on the beach is brutal, and that it braids the fates of a 16-year-old Nigerian orphan (who calls herself Little Bee) and a well-off British couple--journalists trying to repair their strained marriage with a free holiday--who should have stayed behind their resort's walls. The tide of that event carries Little Bee back to their world, which she claims she couldn't explain to the girls from her village because they'd have no context for its abundance and calm. But she shows us the infinite rifts in a globalized world, where any distance can be crossed in a day--with the right papers--and "no one likes each other, but everyone likes U2." Where you have to give up the safety you'd assumed as your birthright if you decide to save the girl gazing at you through razor wire, left to the wolves of a failing state. --_Mari Malcolm_</p><h3>From</h3><p>Chris Cleave's <em>Little Bee</em> works because the unflinching, brutal story balances an outwardly political motive with rich, deep character development (and even some welcome humor), focusing narrowly on events before broadening to reveal some larger truths. Cleave's firm grasp of human nature and his unsparing disdain for injustice allow him to articulate lives as different as those of Little Bee and the less-likeable Sarah; both characters, though, are unforgettable. Comparisons between Cleave and fellow Brits Ian McEwan and John Banville are apt. The only dissent came from the <em>San Francisco Chronicle</em>, which took issue with the narrative voices and the rushed pace of the story. All others agreed, however, that Cleave's sophomore effort is, as the <em>Chicago Sun-Times</em> succinctly put it, "a loud shout of talent."Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC </p>

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<h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>A new phenomenon begins.</strong>   </p><p><strong>Created by #1 New York Times bestselling author Tom Clancy</strong>   </p><p>Based on the bestselling video game, this new series will take readers onto the battlefields of World War III with the technical savvy and explosive action that Clancy fans have come to expect. </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>She's known as the Snow Maiden-an operative of a secret group dedicated to world domination. To get their hands on her, U.S. Special Forces Captain Alexander Brent and his team will have to outmaneuver a terrorist faction bent on wiping her off the face of the earth. </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>“In <em>Green for Life</em>, Victoria Boutenko focuses on the benefits of greens and offers 45 of her favorite green smoothie recipes.”<br />—_Publishers Weekly_  </p><p>“_Green for Life _is a revolutionary but simple idea whose time has come. It is a clear inspiration and great resource to readers who desire to lead healthier lives.”<br />—_Midwest Book Review_  </p><p>“In more than thirty-five years of practice as a psychiatrist affiliated with the Harvard Medical School, I have learned one thing very well: Human behavior is very hard to change. Now Victoria Boutenko is persuading me otherwise. … Thirty days of green smoothies will change how you feel, and how you feel about yourself. That’s no small achievement for one small book.”<br />—A. William Menzin, MD, Harvard Medical School, from the foreword  </p><p>“Victoria Boutenko’s clear, simple, masterful concept is so valuable, so powerful—we can expect to see and feel the world of health rocked to its foundations within the decade.”<br />—Thomas C. Chavez, homeopath and author of <em>Body Electronics</em>  </p><p>“Victoria, you did it again! I love your new book. It will bring health to millions, reduce future risks of degenerative diseases for new generations, and make life easier for all of us now. A must read!”<br />—Dr. Ruza Bodganovich, internationally renowned lecturer and author of_ The Cure is in the Cause_  </p><p>“Raw food expert Victoria Boutenko wants you to eat more leafy greens, but she knows chomping on big bunches of them can be difficult. So, in the second edition of her book <em>Green for Life</em>, originally published in 2005, she instead recommends blending kale, spinach, chard, and the like with different fruits and vegetables and drinking a quart of the resulting green smoothie every day... Already own the book? The new version includes nutritional information on Boutenko's favorite edible weeds (stinging nettles, dandelions, lambsquarters); testimonials from smoothie converts, who marvel at how their various ailments disappear after going green; and some 20 additional recipes for smoothies and puddings, which Boutenko perfected over six years of experimentation.”<br />—_Vegetarian Times_  </p><p><em>“</em><em>Green for Life</em> is the book that makes the case, the proof, if you will, that green smoothies are the missing link in human nutrition… After you read the science and the amazing testimonials, you'll be itching to make your first smoothie… Few books are as ‘must-have’ as this one… 10+ out of 10.”<br />—_The Raw Mocha Angel_<br /><em> </em><br />“_Green for Life_ is a book of hope and encouragement, as it shares a simple and viable way to revitalize your life.”<br />—_Lily of the Valley_  </p><p>“Amazing and inspiring... <em>Green for Life</em> is impossible to read without craving a fresh, green smoothie. Why? The information and stories in the book (including dozens of first person experiences from those who changed their diets after reading the first edition of <em>Green for Life</em>) are compelling, even shocking, and offer the promise of healing for any of us with health and skin issues... pick up this influential book and start getting greens into your daily routine!”<br />—_Beauty is Wellness_  </p><p>“[_Green for Life_]_ _is extremely motivating. It’s short, it’s interesting, and it makes you want to run to your nearest green grocer for an armload of greens to shove into your blender.”<br />—_All Things Nourishing_  </p><p><em>“Green for Life</em> is a very informative book if you are just getting into the green smoothie revolution. Lots of information and case studies on why green smoothies are beneficial, along with a recipe section. Chlorophyll is liquid sunshine!”<br />—_In My Mind’s Zen Garden_  </p><p><em>“</em>As a nutrition professional I frequently discover new diets and eating habits.  Many claim to offer optimal health or weight loss, disease control or the next thing. I find myself reading diet books with a certain skepticism… [Victoria Boutenko’s] research finds many benefits to adding green smoothies to the daily diet... I highly recommend reading [_Green for Life_], and trying the smoothies, to anyone.  If your health is declining, your weight is increasing or decreasing unexpectedly, or if you would like overall health benefits of amazing greens…read this book!”<br />—Rachel Fox, RD, <em>Eat Drink Better</em>  </p><p>“[_Green for Life_ offers] background, logistics, health information, facts, and even a short study with people trying out the smoothie lifestyle. I thoroughly enjoyed this book! ... I noticed a difference in myself after only one day drinking the smoothies. That shocked me. I felt so betrayed by my own desires of wanting 'regular' food. I felt more energized, didn't need as much sleep the night afterward, and could tell my digestion was better… I'm glad to know there's an easy way to add greens and fruits to my diet… helpful and informative.”<br /><strong>—</strong>Kari, <em>Reading For Sanity</em>  </p><p>“[Boutenko] makes it clear throughout [_Green for Life_] that consuming vitamin-packed smoothies is not only the most effective way for our bodies to absorb essential nutrients, adding just one quart of green smoothie a day to one's diet can help with everything from weight loss and cravings, to healing skin conditions and reversing diabetes. She literally has pages and pages of inspiring testimonials, which is helpful for us as readers since we can pinpoint our trouble spot and then look through the book for a way to tackle it with the help of greens.”<br />—_Beauty Snob_  </p><p>“Go green with in-season fruits and veggies via one of Victoria Boutenko’s <em>Green for Life</em> smoothie recipes. Our fave, the Aloe-Ha.”<br />—_The Posh Mom Life_  </p><p>“A good beginner's guide that is ripe for discussion.”<br />—_Elevate Difference_</p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Everyone knows they need to eat more fruits and vegetables, but consuming even the minimum FDA-recommended five servings a day can be challenging. In <em>Green for Life,</em> raw foods pioneer Victoria Boutenko presents an overlooked powerhouse of nutrition in this equation: greens. For their bounty of minerals and nutrients, greens exceed other vegetables in value. <em>Green for Life</em> details the immense health benefits of greens and suggests an easy way to consume them in sufficient quantities: the green smoothie. This quick, simple drink benefits everyone, regardless of lifestyle, diet, or environment. Green smoothies eliminate toxins, correct nutritional deficiencies, and are delicious as well.  </p><p><em>Green for Life</em> includes the latest information on the abundance of protein in greens, the benefits of fiber, the role of greens in homeostasis, the significance of stomach acid, how greens make the body more alkaline, the healing power of chlorophyll, and more. Also included are the results of a pilot study demonstrating the effectiveness of adding just one quart of green smoothies a day to one’s diet, without changing anything else in dietary intake. Green smoothie testimonials and recipes give readers confidence and motivation in exploring green smoothies for themselves. This updated edition offers important new research on the role that omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids play in metabolic health and includes nutritional data on select green smoothies and updated findings on organic versus conventional produce. Offering more in-depth nutritional and experiential information than Boutenko’s recently released <em>Green Smoothie Revolution, Green for Life</em> makes an ideal companion piece to its recipe-rich successor. </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>The extraordinary beginning of an epic series brimming with the unbridled action, adventure, and imagination that have made the name R. A. Salvatore synonymous with the best in fantasy!</p><p>Jeff "Del" DelGuidice was proud of his assignment to the research submarine The Unicorn. But his mission had barely begun when the vessel was sucked into a mysterious underseas void where time stood still, before propelling it forward, through the centuries. The crew surfaced in a strange, magical world changed forever by nuclear holocaust. Here a race of angelic beings had taken pity on the remnants of humankind, offering a chosen few a precious second chance.</p><p>Thus the Isle of Hope was raised from the poisoned seas and set like a jewel in Earth's ravaged crown. But the jewel had a flaw, a dark vein of evil. For a sinister expert of the mystical arts had embraced the forbidden third magic, the most deadly sorcery of all. Only Del could defeat it--a hero sworn to peace and fated to wield the dazzling power of the fourth magic. . .  </p><h3>From the Inside Flap</h3><p>The extraordinary beginning of an epic series brimming with the unbridled action, adventure, and imagination that have made the name R. A. Salvatore synonymous with the best in fantasy!  </p><p>Jeff "Del" DelGuidice was proud of his assignment to the research submarine The Unicorn. But his mission had barely begun when the vessel was sucked into a mysterious underseas void where time stood still, before propelling it forward, through the centuries. The crew surfaced in a strange, magical world changed forever by nuclear holocaust. Here a race of angelic beings had taken pity on the remnants of humankind, offering a chosen few a precious second chance.  </p><p>Thus the Isle of Hope was raised from the poisoned seas and set like a jewel in Earth's ravaged crown. But the jewel had a flaw, a dark vein of evil. For a sinister expert of the mystical arts had embraced the forbidden third magic, the most deadly sorcery of all. Only Del could defeat it--a hero sworn to peace and fated to wield the dazzling power of the fourth magic. . . </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>With the bold adventure and brilliant magic that have made him one of fantasy's bestselling authors, R. A. Salvatore continues the epic series that began with Echoes of the Fourth Magic. Join him for a spellbinding tale of darkness, fantasia, and unbridled imagination.  </p><p>Though many perished in the dark times past, a precious few survivors escaped, fleeing certain doom to find a dazzling, dangerous land of wonder. Here wizards and witches inhabited forests spun from enchantment and towers of celestial beauty. But in this place of promised safety, the Black Warlock was rising from the ashes of defeat--with an insatiable lust to dominate the world.  </p><p>Square in the path of peril was Rhiannon, the gently reared daughter of the Emerald Witch. As hamlets from the Crystal Mountains to Avalon fell before the fury of the Black Warlock, the young witch sensed a sudden call; strange, terrifying powers tingled within her body. Now Rhiannon had to summon these new, untested abilities to stop the ancient warlock, an enemy who had long since mastered the forces of the universe and bent them to his diabolical will. . . </p><h3>From the Inside Flap</h3><p>With the bold adventure and brilliant magic that have made him one of fantasy's bestselling authors, R. A. Salvatore continues the epic series that began with Echoes of the Fourth Magic. Join him for a spellbinding tale of darkness, fantasia, and unbridled imagination.</p><p>Though many perished in the dark times past, a precious few survivors escaped, fleeing certain doom to find a dazzling, dangerous land of wonder. Here wizards and witches inhabited forests spun from enchantment and towers of celestial beauty. But in this place of promised safety, the Black Warlock was rising from the ashes of defeat--with an insatiable lust to dominate the world.</p><p>Square in the path of peril was Rhiannon, the gently reared daughter of the Emerald Witch. As hamlets from the Crystal Mountains to Avalon fell before the fury of the Black Warlock, the young witch sensed a sudden call; strange, terrifying powers tingled within her body. Now Rhiannon had to summon these new, untested abilities to stop the ancient warlock, an enemy who had long since mastered the forces of the universe and bent them to his diabolical will. . . </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Twice the combined might of Ynis Aielle's greatest heroes and wizards<br />has hurled back the demon armies of Morgan Thalasi. Always the Black<br />Warlock has rebounded, stronger and more evil. But never has he wielded such power as now. With the Staff of Death, Thalasi can raise a new army from out of the very ground -- soldiers who cannot be killed because they are already dead.  </p><p>As the Black Warlock and his fearsome general -- the foul wraith that was once Hollis Mitchell -- prepares a devastating attack, the humans and elves of Ynis Aielle are staggered by a fresh calamity. The beautiful<br />Rhiannon, daughter of the Emerald Witch, has been captured by Mitchell and given over to his dark master. Now the last hope of defeating<br />Thalasi -- and Rhiannon's last hope as well -- lies at the heart of a mountain, guarded by a dragon as old as the world itself. . .  </p><h3>From the Inside Flap</h3><p>Twice the combined might of Ynis Aielle's greatest heroes and wizards<br />has hurled back the demon armies of Morgan Thalasi. Always the Black<br />Warlock has rebounded, stronger and more evil. But never has he wielded such power as now. With the Staff of Death, Thalasi can raise a new army from out of the very ground -- soldiers who cannot be killed because they are already dead.</p><p>As the Black Warlock and his fearsome general -- the foul wraith that was once Hollis Mitchell -- prepares a devastating attack, the humans and elves of Ynis Aielle are staggered by a fresh calamity. The beautiful<br />Rhiannon, daughter of the Emerald Witch, has been captured by Mitchell and given over to his dark master. Now the last hope of defeating<br />Thalasi -- and Rhiannon's last hope as well -- lies at the heart of a mountain, guarded by a dragon as old as the world itself. . . </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>Amazon Exclusive: John Irving Reviews <em>Cutting for Stone</em></strong>   </p><p><strong><em>Cutting for Stone</em>:</strong>   </p><p>That <em>Cutting for Stone</em> is a remarkable achievement._--John Irving_</p><p>(Photo © Maki Galimberti)</p><hr /><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Lauded for his sensitive memoir (_My Own Country_) about his time as a doctor in eastern Tennessee at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, Verghese turns his formidable talents to fiction, mining his own life and experiences in a magnificent, sweeping novel that moves from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over decades and generations. Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a devout young nun, leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post in Yemen. During the arduous sea voyage, she saves the life of an English doctor bound for Ethiopia, Thomas Stone, who becomes a key player in her destiny when they meet up again at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa. Seven years later, Sister Praise dies birthing twin boys: Shiva and Marion, the latter narrating his own and his brothers long, dramatic, biblical story set against the backdrop of political turmoil in Ethiopia, the life of the hospital compound in which they grow up and the love story of their adopted parents, both doctors at Missing. The boys become doctors as well and Vergheses weaving of the practice of medicine into the narrative is fascinating even as the story bobs and weaves with the power and coincidences of the best 19th-century novel. <em>(Feb.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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<h3>From</h3><p>The seventh Oregon Files adventure thriller begins on December 7, 1941, when five boys encounter tragedy while looking for buried pirate treasure on a small island off the coast of Washington State. Flash-forward to today: Juan Cabrillo, captain of the Oregon (a high-tech vessel posing as a tramp freighter), is in Argentina, trying to recover a downed NASA satellite. Well, don’t you know, Juan stumbles on something he totally didn’t expect to find, and soon he’s chasing after the secrets of an ancient curse that might still be causing trouble. Fast-paced and a lot of fun, the latest Cabrillo novel delivers the wallop Cussler’s fans have come to expect. Cabrillo himself—he shares his name with a sixteenth-century Portuguese explorer, by the way—makes a fine protagonist, sharp-witted and two-fisted. Considering the Oregon Files novels involve action, exploration, and high-tech gadgetry, it’s surprising no one has turned them into movies yet. The prolific Cussler, who, like James Patterson, now employs coauthors (Du Brul in this case), is often accused of writing by the numbers, but this time those numbers add up to entertaining fare for high-adventure fans. --David Pitt </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>An ancient curse... <br />A prize beyond imagination... <br />Juan Cabrillo will face one to win the other. </p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Kaku (Physics of the Impossible), a professor of physics at the CUNY Graduate Center, gathers ideas from more than 300 experts, scientists, and researchers at the cutting edge of their fields, to offer a glimpse of what the next 100 years may bring. The predictions all conform to certain ground rules (e.g., "Prototypes of all technologies mentioned... already exist"), and some seem obvious (computer chips will continue to get faster and smaller). Others seem less far-fetched than they might have a decade ago: for instance, space tourism will be popular, especially once a permanent base is established on the moon. Other predictions may come true—downloading the Internet right into a pair of contact lenses—but whether they're desirable is another matter. Some of the predictions are familiar but still startling: robots will develop emotions by mid-century, and we will start merging mind and body with them. Despite the familiarity of many of the predictions to readers of popular science and science fiction, Kaku's book should capture the imagination of everyday readers. (Mar.) <br>(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Following in the footsteps of Leonardo da Vinci and Jules Verne, Kaku, author of a handful of books about science, looks into the not-so-distant future and envisions what the world will look like. It should be an exciting place, with driverless cars, Internet glasses, universal translators, robot surgeons, the resurrection of extinct life forms, designer children, space tourism, a manned mission to Mars, none of which turn out to be as science-fictiony as they sound. In fact, the most exciting thing about the book is the fact that most of the developments Kaku discusses can be directly extrapolated from existing technologies. Robot surgeons and driverless cars, for example, already exist in rudimentary forms. Kaku, a physics professor and one of the originators of the string field theory (an offshoot of the more general string theory), draws on current research to show how, in a very real sense, our future has already been written. The book�s lively, user-friendly style should appeal equally to fans of science fiction and popular science. --David Pitt </p>

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<p class="description">EDITORIAL REVIEW: The #1 New York Times bestseller: a brilliant account—character-rich and darkly humorous—of how the U.S. economy was driven over the cliff. When the crash of the U. S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn’t shine, and the SEC doesn’t dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can’t pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren’t talking. The crucial question is this: Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages? Michael Lewis turns the inquiry on its head to create a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 best-selling Liar’s Poker. Who got it right? he asks. Who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception? And what qualities of character made those few persist when their peers and colleagues dismissed them as Chicken Littles? Out of this handful of unlikely—really unlikely—heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times.</p>


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<div><div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3></div><p><em>The Information</em> is a book about everything, from words themselves to talking drums, writing and lexicography, early attempts at an analytical engine, the telegraph and telephone, ENIAC, and the ubiquitous computers that followed. But that's just the "History." The "Theory" focuses on such 20th-century notables as Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener, Alan Turing, and others who worked on coding, decoding, and re-coding both the meaning and the myriad messages transmitted via the media of their times. In the "Flood," Gleick explains genetics as biology's mechanism for informational exchange--Is a chicken just an egg's way of making another egg?--and discusses self-replicating memes (ideas as different as earworms and racism) as information's own evolving meta-life forms. Along the way, readers learn about music and quantum mechanics, why forgetting takes work, the meaning of an "interesting number," and why "[t]he bit is the ultimate unsplittable particle." What results is a visceral sense of information's contemporary precedence as a way of understanding the world, a physical/symbolic palimpsest of self-propelled exchange, the universe itself as the ultimate analytical engine. If Borges's "Library of Babel" is literature's iconic cautionary tale about the extreme of informational overload, Gleick sees the opposite, the world as an endlessly unfolding opportunity in which "creatures of the information" may just recognize themselves. --_Jason Kirk_</p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. In 1948, Bell Laboratories announced the invention of the electronic semiconductor and its revolutionary ability to do anything a vacuum tube could do but more efficiently. While the revolution in communications was taking these steps, Bell Labs scientist Claude Shannon helped to write a monograph for them, A Mathematical Theory of Communication, in which he coined the word bit to name a fundamental unit of computer information. As bestselling author Gleick (Chaos) astutely argues, Shannon's neologism profoundly changed our view of the world; his brilliant work introduced us to the notion that a tiny piece of hardware could transmit messages that contained meaning and that a physical unit, a bit, could measure a quality as elusive as information. Shannon's story is only one of many in this sprawling history of information. With his brilliant ability to synthesize mounds of details and to tell rich stories, Gleick leads us on a journey from one form of communicating information to another, beginning with African tribes' use of drums and including along the way scientists like Samuel B. Morse, who invented the telegraph; Norbert Wiener, who developed cybernetics; and Ada Byron, the great Romantic poet's daughter, who collaborated with Charles Babbage in developing the first mechanical computer. Gleick's exceptional history of culture concludes that information is indeed the blood, the fuel, and the vital principle on which our world runs. (Apr.) <br>(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>Townie</em>. You might think that following his father's trade would have been natural and even obvious for the son and namesake of Andre Dubus, one of the most admired short story writers of his time, but it was anything but. His father left when he was 10, and as his mother worked long hours to keep them fed, her four children mostly raised themselves, stumbling through house parties and street fights in their Massachusetts mill town, so cut off from the larger world that when someone mentioned "Manhattan" when Andre was in college he didn't know what they were talking about. What he did know, and what he recalls with detailed intensity, were the battles in bars and front yards, brutal to men and women alike, that first gave him discipline, as he built himself from a fearful kid into a first-punch, hair-trigger bruiser, and then empathy, as, miraculously, he pulled himself back from the violence that threatened to define him. And it was out of that empathy that, wanting to understand the stories of the victims of brutality as well as those whose pain drove them to dish it out, he began to write, reconciling with his father and eventually giving us novels like <em>--Tom Nissley</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Long before he became the highly acclaimed author of House of Sand and Fog, Dubus shuffled and punched his way through a childhood and youth full of dysfunction, desperation, and determination. Just after he turned 12, Dubus's family fell rapidly into shambles after his father--the prominent writer Andre Dubus--not only left his wife for a younger woman but also left the family in distressing poverty on the violent and drug-infested side of their Massachusetts mill town. For a few years, Dubus escaped into drugs, embracing the apathetic "no-way-out" attitude of his friends. After having his bike stolen, being slapped around by some of the town's bullies, and watching his brother and mother humiliated by some of the town's thugs, Dubus started lifting weights at home and boxing at the local gym. Modeling himself on the Walking Tall sheriff, Buford Pusser, Dubus paid back acts of physical violence with physical violence. Ultimately, he decided to take up his pen and write his way up from the bottom and into a new relationship with his father. In this gritty and gripping memoir, Dubus bares his soul in stunning and page-turning prose. (Feb.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p>


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<div><h3>From</h3><p>This is the ultimate cold case�tragic, high-profile, and, finally, successfully solved. Six-year-old Adam Walsh was abducted from a crowded Sears store in Hollywood, Florida, in 1981. Later, he was murdered and decapitated. Identifying Adam�s killer took 25 years. His parents turned into tireless advocates for missing and abused children; Adam�s father, John Walsh, moved from a sales job to being the executive producer and host of America�s Most Wanted. This forceful account, written with Matthews, former sergeant with the Miami Beach Police Department, who worked the case for years, gives readers the ultimate insider�s account of the grueling search for Adam�s killer and for the evidence to convict him. While many true-crime books claim to shine a light on society by examining one particular case, this account actually does. No reader can come away from this without appreciating what it takes to keep pursuing an investigation, against the obstacles of police politics and bureaucracy. Wrenching and riveting. --Connie Fletcher </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“BRINGING ADAM HOME is a maddening, terrifying and ultimately triumphant book. Les Standiford explores the injustice and finally justice surrounding the murder of Adam Walsh. You will cry and rage but you will not be able to put this book down until you finish it. My God! What a book!” (Ann Hood, author of THE RED THREAD and THE KNITTING CIRCLE )  </p><p>“Les Standiford’s account of the decades-long attempt to solve the murder of Adam Walsh is chilling, heartbreaking, hopeful, and as relentlessly suspenseful as anything I’ve ever read. A triumph in every way.” (Dennis Lehane, author of MYSTIC RIVER and SHUTTER ISLAND )  </p><p>“I didn’t live far from the mall where Adam Walsh was kidnapped. I remember that story as if it were yesterday. It terrified me as a kid. But it’s the details that Les Standiford has found that terrify me as an adult. Insightful, horrifying, and just beautifully written.” (Brad Meltzer, New York Times bestselling author of THE BOOK OF FATE )  </p><p>“BRINGING ADAM HOME is a riveting account of a child abduction and murder that goes unsolved for twenty-seven years—both an unsettling expose of police incompetence and a portrait of an extraordinary and dedicated detective.” (Joyce Carol Oates )  </p><p>“This tale of the most significant missing child case since the Lindbergh’s—that of TV host John Walsh’s son Adam and the 25 year search for his killer—is truly terrific.A taut, compelling and often touching book about a long march to justice.” (Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent )  </p><p>“Not since IN COLD BLOOD has the story of a terrible crime been told with such elegance and power....Heartbreaking and hypnotically suspenseful.” (Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author of VANISHED ) </p>

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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>A prelude to fame, Just Kidsrecounts the friendship of two young artists--Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe - whose passion fueled their lifelong pursuit of art. In 1967, a chance meeting between two young people led to a romance and a lifelong friendship that would carry each to international success never dreamed of. The backdrop is Brooklyn, Chelsea Hotel, Max's Kansas City, Scribner's Bookstore, Coney Island, Warhol's Factory and the whole city resplendent. Among their friends, literary lights, musicians and artists such as Harry Smith, Bobby Neuwirth, Allen Ginsberg, Sandy Daley, Sam Shepherd, William Burroughs, etc. It was a heightened time politically and culturally; the art and music worlds exploding and colliding. In the midst of all this two kids made a pact to always care for one another. Scrappy, romantic, committed to making art, they prodded and provided each other with faith and confidence during the hungry years--the days of cous-cous and lettuce soup. Just Kidsbegins as a love story and ends as an elegy. Beautifully written, this is a profound portrait of two young artists, often hungry, sated only by art and experience. And an unforgettable portrait of New York, her rich and poor, hustlers and hellions, those who made it and those whose memory lingers near.</p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>Unbroken</em>, the inspiring true story of a man who lived through a series of catastrophes almost too incredible to be believed. In evocative, immediate descriptions, Hillenbrand unfurls the story of Louie Zamperini--a juvenile delinquent-turned-Olympic runner-turned-Army hero. During a routine search mission over the Pacific, Louie’s plane crashed into the ocean, and what happened to him over the next three years of his life is a story that will keep you glued to the pages, eagerly awaiting the next turn in the story and fearing it at the same time. You’ll cheer for the man who somehow maintained his selfhood and humanity despite the monumental degradations he suffered, and you’ll want to share this book with everyone you know._ --Juliet Disparte_</p><p><strong>The Story of <em>Unbroken</em> by Laura Hillenbrand</strong></p><p>Eight years ago, an old man told me a story that took my breath away. His name was Louie Zamperini, and from the day I first spoke to him, his almost incomprehensibly dramatic life was my obsession.</p><p>It was a horse--the subject of my first book, <em>Seabiscuit</em>, I tracked Louie down, called him and asked about his life. For the next hour, he had me transfixed.</p><p>Growing up in California in the 1920s, Louie was a hellraiser, stealing everything edible that he could carry, staging elaborate pranks, getting in fistfights, and bedeviling the local police. But as a teenager, he emerged as one of the greatest runners America had ever seen, competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he put on a sensational performance, crossed paths with Hitler, and stole a German flag right off the Reich Chancellery. He was preparing for the 1940 Olympics, and closing in on the fabled four-minute mile, when World War II began. Louie joined the Army Air Corps, becoming a bombardier. Stationed on Oahu, he survived harrowing combat, including an epic air battle that ended when his plane crash-landed, some six hundred holes in its fuselage and half the crew seriously wounded.</p><p>On a May afternoon in 1943, Louie took off on a search mission for a lost plane. Somewhere over the Pacific, the engines on his bomber failed. The plane plummeted into the sea, leaving Louie and two other men stranded on a tiny raft. Drifting for weeks and thousands of miles, they endured starvation and desperate thirst, sharks that leapt aboard the raft, trying to drag them off, a machine-gun attack from a Japanese bomber, and a typhoon with waves some forty feet high. At last, they spotted an island. As they rowed toward it, unbeknownst to them, a Japanese military boat was lurking nearby. Louie’s journey had only just begun.</p><p>That first conversation with Louie was a pivot point in my life. Fascinated by his experiences, and the mystery of how a man could overcome so much, I began a seven-year journey through his story. I found it in diaries, letters and unpublished memoirs; in the memories of his family and friends, fellow Olympians, former American airmen and Japanese veterans; in forgotten papers in archives as far-flung as Oslo and Canberra. Along the way, there were staggering surprises, and Louie’s unlikely, inspiring story came alive for me. It is a tale of daring, defiance, persistence, ingenuity, and the ferocious will of a man who refused to be broken.</p><p>The culmination of my journey is my new book, <em>Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption</em>. I hope you are as spellbound by Louie’s life as I am.</p><hr /><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. From the 1936 Olympics to WWII Japan's most brutal POW camps, Hillenbrand's heart-wrenching new book is thousands of miles and a world away from the racing circuit of her bestselling Seabiscuit. But it's just as much a page-turner, and its hero, Louie Zamperini, is just as loveable: a disciplined champion racer who ran in the Berlin Olympics, he's a wit, a prankster, and a reformed juvenile delinquent who put his thieving skills to good use in the POW camps, In other words, Louie is a total charmer, a lover of life--whose will to live is cruelly tested when he becomes an Army Air Corps bombardier in 1941. The young Italian-American from Torrance, Calif., was expected to be the first to run a four-minute mile. After an astonishing but losing race at the 1936 Olympics, Louie was hoping for gold in the 1940 games. But war ended those dreams forever. In May 1943 his B-24 crashed into the Pacific. After a record-breaking 47 days adrift on a shark-encircled life raft with his pal and pilot, Russell Allen "Phil" Phillips, they were captured by the Japanese. In the "theater of cruelty" that was the Japanese POW camp network, Louie landed in the cruelest theaters of all: Omori and Naoetsu, under the control of Corp. Mutsuhiro Watanabe, a pathologically brutal sadist (called the Bird by camp inmates) who never killed his victims outright--his pleasure came from their slow, unending torment. After one beating, as Watanabe left Louie's cell, Louie saw on his face a "soft languor.... It was an expression of sexual rapture." And Louie, with his defiant and unbreakable spirit, was Watanabe's victim of choice. By war's end, Louie was near death. When Naoetsu was liberated in mid-August 1945, a depleted Louie's only thought was "I'm free! I'm free! I'm free!" But as Hillenbrand shows, Louie was not yet free. Even as, returning stateside, he impulsively married the beautiful Cynthia Applewhite and tried to build a life, Louie remained in the Bird's clutches, haunted in his dreams, drinking to forget, and obsessed with vengeance. In one of several sections where Hillenbrand steps back for a larger view, she writes movingly of the thousands of postwar Pacific PTSD sufferers. With no help for their as yet unrecognized illness, Hillenbrand says, "there was no one right way to peace; each man had to find his own path...." The book's final section is the story of how, with Cynthia's help, Louie found his path. It is impossible to condense the rich, granular detail of Hillenbrand's narrative of the atrocities committed (one man was exhibited naked in a Tokyo zoo for the Japanese to "gawk at his filthy, sore-encrusted body") against American POWs in Japan, and the courage of Louie and his fellow POWs, who made attempts on Watanabe's life, committed sabotage, and risked their own lives to save others. Hillenbrand's triumph is that in telling Louie's story (he's now in his 90s), she tells the stories of thousands whose suffering has been mostly forgotten. She restores to our collective memory this tale of heroism, cruelty, life, death, joy, suffering, remorselessness, and redemption. (Nov.) -Reviewed by Sarah F. Gold <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>"Jack Morgan is a war hero. Returning home from Afghanistan after being wounded, Jack is called into California State Prison to visit his father, Tom, who is serving a life sentence for extortion and murder. Before being incarcerated, Tom ran a private investigation firm called 'Private'. Tom wants Jack to re-start the company, to make it great again, and gives him access to a $15 million dollar account in the Cayman Islands to do it with. Five years later and Jack has set up offices spanning the globe. Private's services are much sort after and Jack has clients ranging from movie stars to politicians. Jack is keen to keep the business legal and not fall into the same traps as his father. But when the mob come calling, they are not easy to refuse. On a rare night off accompanying a client to the Golden Globe awards, Jack receives a phone call from school friend Abbie Cushman. Abbie's wife has been murdered and he desperately needs Jack's help. The murder is brutal and with no apparent motive; fingers begin pointing towards Abbie. Jack is certain that Abbie didn't kill his wife, but he will have to work night and day to prove it. Meanwhile, Jack's second-in-command at Private, Justine Smith, is helping the L.A.P.D. in a serial killer investigation. Over the past two years, twelve school girls from the same area in L.A. have been murdered. The killings are highly professional and so far the Police have no leads whatsoever. Justine has been called in to make use of her experience and Private's resources. A breakthrough is desperately needed, because these killings show no signs of stopping."</p>


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<div><h3>From</h3><p>Reading a Maeve Binchy novel is like settling in for a cozy visit with an old friend. In vintage Binchy style, a cast of colorfully eccentric characters living in a snug Dublin neighborhood seamlessly weave in and out of each other’s lives, united by family, faith, friendship, and community. When a young alcoholic learns he has fathered a child with a dying woman, he must step into the role of father, protector, and provider to his infant daughter, Frankie, in a matter of weeks. Determined to succeed, though totally unprepared for his new responsibilities, Noel gets an essential assist from his visiting American cousin. Exercising her tremendous gifts of organization and insight, Emily cobbles together a neighborhood support system, featuring a few familiar faces from previous Binchy books. As everybody begins to mind Frankie, a suspicious social worker pokes her nose in where it doesn’t belong, attempting to dredge up any dirt she can on Noel and his slightly unorthodox network of babysitters. Readers will need a box of tissues handy as the good-hearted residents of St. Jarlath’s Crescent prove that it does indeed take a village to raise a child. --Margaret Flanagan </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“One of Binchy’s best works. She harmoniously handles a diverse group of characters, the good deeds that characterize life in Ireland are believable, and the ending is sweet. One hopes to find Frankie in one of Binchy’s future novels.” —Susan Rogers, <em>Newark Star-Ledger</em>  </p><p>“Binchy’s world view is a large, benevolent one, and the reader is happier for it . . . bless her big Irish heart.” —Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis <em>Star-Tribune</em>  </p><p>“Maeve Binchy has done it again [with] yet another warm tale of individual growth and human community, [in which] she assembles a large cast of characters and deploys them with her characteristic playfulness . . . Binchy specializes in exploring human foibles without spelling them out in tiresome detail . . . There’s a good chance that many readers, like this one, will consider Minding Frankie one of Binchy’s best novels yet.” —Maude McDaniel, _BookPage<br>_ <br>“Joyful, quintessential Binchy.” —Karen Holt, <em>O, The Oprah Magazine</em> <br></p><hr>“All across America, Maeve Binchy fans will be kicking off their shoes, making a nice cup of tea, and curling up on the couch as they re-enter Binchy’s cozy world. The Irish author returns here to a charming Dublin milieu of favorite characters from past novels, with some important new ones.” —Melinda Bargreen, <em>The Seattle Times</em>  <p></p><p>“Binchy is a national treasure in her homeland of Ireland, and her latest novel is a perfect illustration of why.…Your heart will have no trouble recognizing the landscape [of this] touching saga.” —_Publishers Weekly_  </p><p>“Reading a Maeve Binchy novel is like settling in for a cozy visit with an old friend.  In vintage Binchy style, a cast of colorfully eccentric characters living in a snug Dublin neighborhood seamlessly weave in and out of each other’s lives, united by family, faith, friendship and community....Readers will need a box of tissues handy as the good-hearted residents of St. Jarlath’s Crescent prove that it does indeed take a ‘village to raise a child.’” —Margaret Flanagan, <em>Booklist</em>  </p>

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<h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> Sounes has earned a well-deserved reputation for writing thoroughly researched, intricately detailed biographies. This comprehensive biography of McCartney is no exception. Sounes seems to have spoken to every living person with any connection to the former Beatle, from the singer’s neighbors near his Kintyre, Scotland, farm to the family veterinarian. Divided into two equally large sections—“With the Beatles” and “After the Beatles”—Fab covers all the highlights of McCartney’s life and long career: his early days in Liverpool; his meeting with John Lennon; the craziness of Beatlemania; his solo albums; the creation and collapse of his post-Beatles band, Wings; his marriage to Linda Eastman; his last meetings with Lennon; his drug bust in Japan; his forays into classical music; his disastrous second marriage to Heather Mills. This is by no means a hagiography. On the contrary, Sounes gives criticism when warranted, remarking on McCartney’s flaws both as a musician (settling for the ordinary, or, worse, mediocre rather then putting in the extra effort to create something exceptional) and as a man (a streak of selfishness that could turn callous). Indeed, Sounes is often brutally honest, offering a full portrait—warts and all—of one of the most famous men of the modern era. A must for Beatles and McCartney fans. HIGH-DEMAND BACK STORY: In spite of his persistent mega-fame, this is the first comprehensive, candid, and up-to-date portrait of Sir Paul McCartney, making it a magnet for boomers and serious music lovers. --June Sawyers </p><h3>Review</h3><p><strong><em>Booklist</em></strong><strong>, July 2010</strong><br />“Everyone knows who Paul McCartney is. And everyone can imagine how much in demand this biography will be.”</p><p><strong><em>Kirkus,</em>9/15/10</strong><br />“[A] solid addition to the ever-expanding library of books about the Beatle named Paul…More than 200 interviews—and no-nonsense attention to detail…The graceful prose and superb storytelling create a riveting narrative.”</p><p><strong><em>Booklist</em></strong><strong>, 10/15/10 (starred review)</strong></p><p>“Sounes has earned a well-deserved reputation for writing thoroughly researched, intricately detailed biographies. This comprehensive biography of McCartney is no exception. Sounes seems to have spoken to every living person with any connection to the former Beatle…Fab covers all the highlights of McCartney’s life and long career…This is by no means a hagiography. On the contrary, Sounes gives criticism when warranted, remarking on McCartney’s flaws both as a musician and as a man. Indeed, Sounes is often brutally honest, offering a full portrait—warts and all—of one of the most famous men of the modern era. A must for Beatles and McCartney fans…In spite of his persistent mega-fame, this is the first comprehensive, candid, and up-to-date portrait of Sir Paul McCartney, making it a magnet for boomers and serious music lovers.”</p><p><strong><em>Library Journal</em>, 10/15/10</strong></p><p>“A probing work that examines McCartney’s foibles to a much greater extent than, for example, Barry Miles’s authorized_Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now_…There is a ton of engrossing, well-documented material here…A worthwhile read for McCartney fans; recommended for all public libraries.”</p><p><strong><em>The Independent</em></strong>, <strong>9/24/10</strong></p><p>“Exceedingly thorough…A good read for those seeking a Pauline perspective on the Beatles plus a look at his solo career.”</p><p><em></em><br />Stuff.co.nz “Blog on Tracks<strong>,” </strong>9/14/10“<br /><em></em>A fantastic tome…Sounes adds a lot to the story and his methodical, meticulous research style means that he's actually bringing new things out…Sounes has, through hundreds of interviews, built a book about McCartney that addresses the myth, understands the legend and is balanced; never getting anywhere near the all too common hagiography that is the bane of reading the  modern music biography/ghost-written-autobiography…I found it the perfect balance of entertainment and education/research—and, as such, it's<strong> </strong><strong>one of the best biographies I've ever read</strong>.”</p><p><em></em><em>Blurt</em>Online, 10/18/10<br /><em></em>“The portrait painted in Howard Sounes’_Fab _is of a man with more to him than meets the eye or ear…Sounes' treatment of Paul is fairly even-handed though. He doesn't shy away from the bad and doesn't overstate the good…There's still a hunger for all things Beatle and Sounes' book has its place.”</p><p><em></em><em>Word,</em>November 2010<br /><em></em>“[T]he first major unauthorized biography…. Howard Sounes brings to the task the same solid journalistic values he employed in writing his Dylan biography_Down the Highway_,which succeeded in unearthing troves of new information through the simple expedient of diligent legwork, hunting down the right people, and asking them the right questions.”</p><p><em></em><em>Rolling Stone</em>, 11/11/10<br /><em></em>“Few Beatle biographies are as exhaustive as this 634-page epic: Sounes paints an unsparing portrait of McCartney…For fans willing to ponder their hero’s flaws,_Fab_delivers all you need to know—and a lot more.”</p><p><strong><em>Wall Street Journa</em>l, 10/29/10</strong></p><p>“Provide[s] sound background on Mr. McCartney's working-class roots, the environs of Liverpool, and the bonding of two song-writing youths (Mr. McCartney and John Lennon) who both lost their mothers while still in their teens. The author turns up new details on these early topics.”</p><p><strong><em>San Antonio</em></strong><strong><em>Express-News</em>, 10/24/10</strong></p><p>“[A] massive, exhaustively researched biography.”</p><p><strong><em>New York</em></strong><strong><em>Journal of Books</em>, 10/26/10</strong></p><p>“Delivers on every promise it even thinks about making…McCartney fans will enjoy hearing some of the never-before-told stories about his family…The author handles the rougher topics with a professionalism that attempts to be as unbiased as possible…Sounes’ narrative writing style is easy to read. Instead of feeling like a dry, academic work, the book reads almost like a novel…The 500+ pages do not necessarily fly by, but the tale told is worth the time it takes to tell it.”</p><p>_<strong>The Independent</strong>_<strong>, 9/24/10</strong><br />“Exceedingly thorough…A good read for those seeking a Pauline perspective on the Beatles plus a look at his solo career.”<em></em><br /><em></em></p><p><strong>Blogcritics.org, 10/29/10</strong></p><p>“A compelling read…Since Sounes has dug so deep into McCartney lore, there is bound to be a surprise or two for even for the staunchest admirer…Hard to put down. Sounes' writing style is breezy without being slight. His admiration for his subject is evident, even when he is at his most candid, all of which makes_Fab_a worthwhile read.”</p><p><em></em>_<br />Desert News_, 10/31/10<em></em></p><p>“[The] first exhaustive biography of James Paul McCartney.”</p><p><em></em><br />Bookviews.com, November 2010<em></em></p><p>“Will more than satisfy any one of his fans.”</p><p><em></em>_<br />National Post_<em></em> <strong>(Canada), 11/1/10</strong></p><p>“Massive…Full of intriguing snapshots.”</p><p><em></em>_<br />CBC News_(Canada), 11/4/10<em></em></p><p>“A compelling biography.”</p><p><em></em>_<br />Record Collector_(UK), December 2010<em></em></p><p>“Macca examined in high-def accuracy…Where Sounes scores…is in scything through the wild undergrowth of facts, misinformation and myths to present a level-headed portrait of a musician who, obviously, is still held in fascination by the public…The definitive take on an extraordinary career…Sounes is also admirably responsible in his dissection of the Heather Mills years, sifting through the tabloid salaciousness to outline chains of events with the confident, dispassionate eye of a seasoned and reliable journalist.”  </p><p><strong><em>The Onion</em>, 11/11/10</strong></p><p>“_Fab_does a credible job of outlining McCartney’s life and habits. So much has been written about The Beatles—and by contrast, so little about McCartney’s far longer (and during the ’70s, nearly as popular) solo career—that Sounes’ equal treatment of the eras is welcome.”</p><p><em></em>_<br />Tucson Citizen_, 11/8/10<em></em></p><p>“A 634-page epic about Paul McCartney that covers almost every aspect of his life…Sounes has done his homework, his research detailed and meticulous…The result is a rather unsettling portrait of an incredibly creative, complex man who could be petty and nasty, generous and charitable…Revealing, well-crafted, and utterly fascinating.”</p><p><em></em>_<br />Toronto_<em></em><strong><em>Star</em>, 11/5/10</strong></p><p>“[An] unauthorized biography of the famous and unimaginably wealthy bassist and composer…A minutely detailed and comprehensive account of the famous musician’s life up to now…On the whole, Sounes renders his subject sympathetically, as a gifted but flawed character.”</p><p><em></em>_<br />Montreal_<strong></strong><em>Gazette</em>’s “Words &amp; Music” Blog, 11/11/10<br /><em></em>“The first book to properly deal with McCartney's career after the Beatles.”</p><p><strong><em>BookPage,</em>December 2010</strong></p><p>“Impressively thorough and up-to-date.”</p><p><em></em>_<br />Kirkus Reviews_website, 10/26/10<em></em></p><p>“Reveal[s] a side of the ‘nice’ Beatle most people never knew existed.”</p><p><em></em>_<br />San Francisco_<em></em><strong><em>Book Review,</em>November 2010</strong></p><p>“A fascinating and nostalgic trip back to when the Beatles changed the course of music forever.”</p><p><em></em><br />InfoDad.com, 11/18/10<em></em></p><p>“Exhaustively researched…Name-packed, gossipy, interpretative but not judgmental, and very detail-oriented…Fans of McCartney will surely find [it] intriguing if they receive it as a gift.”</p><p><strong>BlogTalkRadio’s “Mr. Media”, 11/18/10</strong></p><p>“Howard Sounes won’t deny that there have been an awful lot of books about the Beatles and Paul McCartney. But that didn’t give him pause; he just researched and wrote one of the best.”</p><p>_<strong>New York Times Book Review</strong>_<strong>, 12/5/10</strong><br />“_Fab_lifts off…in 1967, with the introduction of its most interesting character—the rock photographer Linda Eastman, who set her sights on Paul and determined to marry him even before they had met…Sounes’s portrayal of her is complicated, fascinating in its contradictions.”  </p><p>_<strong>Miami Herald</strong>_<strong>, 11/28/10</strong><br />“The first serious biographical attempt to pay as much attention to the 40-year span that followed McCartney’s run in the Beatles as it does to his decade within the Fab Four…Sounes’ reach is commendable.”  </p><p>_<strong>Publishers Weekly</strong>_<strong> (web-exclusive), 11/22/10</strong><br />“An engaging, set-the-record-straight biography…Sounes writes knowledgeably of the Beatles' close relationship with their tortured manager, Brian ...</p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>"Chris finds his teenage lusts becoming the thirst of the undead. Horror fans will find this vampire novel a bloody cut above the usual fare," said PW. Ages 14-up. <br>Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 7 Up. Chris has problems?bickering, divorce-bound parents; a domineering older brother; his best friends becoming estranged. Overshadowing everything is the fact that Chris, while churning in adolescent hormonal changes, is becoming a vampire. The good people of his Massachusetts town are almost inured to the murders committed by vampires. Yet violent mobs shortcut justice with stake-through-the-heart lynchings. As Chris's blood lust grows, he's increasingly challenged to hide his transformation. "Chet," claiming to be an avatar of the Forces of Light, offers to reverse Chris's vampirism in exchange for his help in keeping the Vampire Lord imprisoned beneath the local reservoir. The teen agrees and does the deed, then spirals into self-doubt. Has he done the right thing? Who can he trust? If he reveals himself, will his family and friends betray him, kill him? Dark humor runs rampant. The invitation to a vampire gathering is a hoot ("drinks at 12:00"), and the imprisoned "dark god" rages amid the static of late night TV. Sexy Lolli, a vampire vixen, urges Chris to "come out of the coffin." Chris pays the price of making commitments without understanding the consequences. He struggles to the end to stay human and do the right thing, remaining a veritable vampire virgin, inevitably doomed to choose death either by starvation or biological destiny. Entertaining, disturbing, memorable, and sophisticated, this mortality tale will continue to haunt after the last pages are turned.?Joel Shoemaker, Southeast Jr. High School, Iowa City, IA<br>Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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The year is 1868, and Sherlock Holmes is fourteen. His life is that of a perfectly ordinary army officer's son: boarding school, good manners, a classical education ' the backbone of the British Empire. But all that is about to change. With his father suddenly posted to India, and his mother mysteriously 'unwell', Sherlock is sent to stay with his eccentric uncle and aunt in their vast house in Hampshire. So begins a summer that leads Sherlock to uncover his first murder, a kidnap, corruption and a brilliantly sinister villain of exquisitely malign intent...The Death Cloud is the first in a series of novels in which the iconic detective is reimagined as a brilliant, troubled and engaging teenager ' creating unputdownable detective adventures that remain true to the spirit of the original books.


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Sherlock knows that Amyus Crow, his mysterious American tutor, has some dark secrets. But he didn't expect to find a notorious killer, hanged by the US government, apparently alive and well in Surrey - and Crow somehow mixed up in it. When no one will tell you the truth, sometimes you have to risk all to discover it for yourself. And so begins an adventure that will take Sherlock across the ocean to America, to the centre of a deadly web - where life and death are cheap, and truth has a price no sane person would pay . . .</p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>“Beautiful . . . funny, heart-hammering, wise . . . Superb entertainment.”<br />_–The New York Times  </p><p>_“A book that should join those few that every literate person will have to read.”<br />_–The Boston Globe  </p><p>_“A novelist who knows what a proper story is . . . [Tyler is] not only a good and artful writer, but a wise one as well.”<br />–_Newsweek_<em></em>  </p><p><em></em>“Anne Tyler is surely one of the most satisfying novelists working in America today.”<br />_–Chicago Tribune<br />_<br />“In her ninth novel she has arrived at a new level of power.”<br />–JOHN UPDIKE, <em>The New Yorker</em><em></em><br /><em></em>_<br />_</p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>“Beautiful . . . funny, heart-hammering, wise . . . superb entertainment.” <br />–The New York Times  </p><p>“A book that should join those few that every literate person will have to read.”<br />–The Boston Globe  </p><p>Pearl Tull is nearing the end of her life but not of her memory. It was a Sunday night in 1944 when her husband left the little row house on Baltimore’s Calvert Street, abandoning Pearl to raise their three children alone: Jenny, high-spirited and determined, nurturing to strangers but distant to those she loves; the older son, Cody, a wild and incorrigible youth possessed by the lure of power and money; and sweet, clumsy Ezra, Pearl’s favorite, who never stops yearning for the perfect family that could never be his own.  </p><p>Now Pearl and her three grown children have gathered together again–with anger, hope, and a beautiful, harsh, and dazzling story to tell.  </p><p>“A novelist who knows what a proper story is . . . [Tyler is] not only a good and artful writer, but a wise one as well.”<br />–Newsweek  </p><p>“Anne Tyler is surely one of the most satisfying novelists working in America today.”<br />–Chicago Tribune  </p><p>“In her ninth novel she has arrived at a new level of power.”<br />–John Updike, The New Yorker  </p><p>“Marvelous, astringent, hilarious, [and] strewn with the banana peels of love.”<br />–Cosmopolitan </p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>This is a fantastic new package for this chilling tale by the international bestseller. Glenn drove the Land Rover into a stone wall at just over 100mph. Alice stuck a meat fork through her hand and pinned it to the chopping board. Brenda took off all her clothes. She did whatever she was told. They were compelled by a fear too great to be remembered, enslaved by a power no man should ever wield. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Dean Koontz was born into a very poor family and learned early on to escape into fiction. His novels have sold over 200 million copies worldwide and more than thirty have appeared on national and international bestseller lists. He lives in southern California with his wife, Gerda and a vivid imagination. </p>

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<h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 8 Up—Building on her extensive research conducted after reading a newspaper article about the lynching of Sicilian grocers in Tallulah, LA, in 1899, Napoli presents a moving, sobering story about an aspect of American immigration that is probably unknown to most readers. After his mother's death, 14-year-old Calogero leaves his bustling Sicilian home for the sleepy southern town to help his uncles and younger cousin run their grocery store. White customers expect to be served before blacks and make their displeasure angrily apparent when the Sicilians fail to do so. Barred from the white school and unaware that he can attend the black school, Calogero learns English from a tutor who also tries to help him comprehend Southern American behavior. The cousins meet some African American boys who take them on a terrifying alligator hunt that firmly cements their friendship. Calogero is attracted to Patricia, a African American girl, but fails to fully understand the danger behind her fear of being seen in public with him. Although he has heard his uncles' stories of the recent lynching of Sicilians in New Orleans, he is unprepared for the horrifying tragedy that befalls his family when a local white doctor kills Uncle Francesco's goats and then convinces an angry mob that the Sicilians plan to retaliate violently. Historical events are smoothly integrated with vivid everyday details, strong characterizations, and genuine-sounding dialogue. Ultimately, the author expands her themes beyond the story's specifics, encouraging readers to reconsider the motivations behind this calamity and other manifestations of racism.—_Ginny Gustin, Sonoma County Library System, Santa Rosa, CA_ <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>...The facts from [a] little-told chapter in American history frame Napoli’s wrenching novel about a 14-year-old Sicilian, Calogero, who joins male relatives in Tallulah after his mother’s death. Legally segregated from both whites and blacks, the Italians maintain an insular life, focused on their thriving produce business, until Calo’s secret crush on African American Patricia begins to dissolve social barriers between the two communities, even as social tensions with whites escalate into shocking violence. Through Calo’s active questioning, Napoli integrates a great deal of background history that is further explored in an extensive author’s note. Readers learn, right along with naive Calo, the draconian specifics of Jim Crow laws and the complex factors of fear and economics that fueled the South’s entrenched bigotry. A few passages do have a purposeful feel, particularly those between Calo and his tutor, but Napoli’s skillful pacing and fascinating detail combine in a gripping story that sheds cold, new light on Southern history and on the nature of racial prejudice. Grades 7-10. --Gillian Engberg </p>


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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>Rip-roaring, heart-tugging, flag-flying, hair-raising, hoof-beating ... the very presence of India The Times A long, romantic adventure story of the highest calibre ... wildly exciting Daily Telegraph Magnificent is the only possible description for The Far Pavilions ... not one of its 950 pages is a page too much Evening Standard A Gone With the Wind of the North-West frontier -- Jan Morris The Times A massive, meticulously researched and fascinating saga about the British in India, encompassing a guarter of a century, from the Mutiny up to war with ferocious Afghan tribemen Sunday Express </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>This is a magnificent romantic/historical/adventure novel set in India at the time of mutiny. "The Far Pavilions" is a story of 19th Century India, when the thin patina of English rule held down dangerously turbulent undercurrents. It is a story about an English man - Ashton Pelham-Martyn - brought up as a Hindu and his passionate, but dangerous love for an Indian princess. It is the story of divided loyalties, of friendship that endures till death, of high adventure and of the clash between East and West. To the burning plains and snow-capped mountains of this great, humming continent, M.M. Kaye brings her quite exceptional gift of storytelling and meticulous historical accuracy, plus her insight into the human heart. </p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Old favorite. Bestselling author Nora Roberts grabs her readers from page one. Innocence, Mississippi, isn't innocent for long when a murderer strikes the sleepy town. Concert violinist Caroline Waverly has returned to her deceased grandparents home to escape high-pressured concert tours. She is soon caught up by the irresistible charm of Southerner Tucker Longstreet. The dark secrets of Innocence soon begin to surface and together Caroline and Tucker not only face a murderer but discover secrets from the past. </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Roberts ( Genuine Lies ) plunks a pair of likable lovers into an equally likable rural Southern community; she then keeps the story from turning sweeter than blackstrap molasses by setting loose a serial killer. World-class violinist Caroline Waverly, recovering from a breakdown and an affair gone bad, arrives at her grandparents' house in Innocence, Miss., looking for peace and quiet; what she discovers is the naked, mutilated corpse of Edda Lou Hatinger. Only days earlier, Edda Lou had thrilled local gossips by publicly blowing up at Tucker Longstreet: he wanted out of their affair; she wanted marriage. Edda Lou is the third woman stabbed to death recently, so local police call in Matthew Burns, a federal investigator who specializes in tracking serial killers. In the meantime, Tucker decides to be right neighborly to Caroline, and after her initial resistance crumbles, she responds to his Southern charm. Tucker is on Matthew's list of suspects, and soon a fourth dead woman is found on the Longstreet family property. Caroline, too, faces the knife as she is drawn into a confrontation in which she learns who is behind the deaths. <br />Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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The natural successors to Terry Goodkind: a stunning first novel that will leave readers gasping for more! Steven Taylor is an assistant bank manager in a quiet little Mid-West town; his roommate Mark Jenkins is a high school history teacher. Steven’s bored with his job; the thought of going through all the accounts that haven’t had a single transaction in the past 25 years sounds even more boring - until he discovers one old prospector left $17,000 in October 1870; it’s now worth 6.3 million dollars. There’s a safe deposit box too, 17C, that’s never been opened in all those years.
And it would have remained closed if Steven hadn’t been browsing through a Denver antique store: as well as a dresser  for his sister, he found a new girlfriend, Hannah, the owner’s daughter … and, in a jar of oddments, the long-missing key to Idaho Springs Safety Deposit Box 17C.
And without that key, he’d never have found the tapestry that sucked him and Mark into the land of Rona in the strange new world of Eldarn, where they are immediately captured by a group of Ronan resistance fighters. Rona has been occupied by Malakasia for nearly a thousand Twinmoons. Now an evil tyrant rules the land, but he wants more: he wants the key that will open the path for an ancient evil to manifest once and for all.
And Steven and Mark need this same key if they are ever to get home to Idaho Springs …


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Return to the land of Eldarn, and the race to find Lessek's key and save the people of two worlds. The Larion spell table has been dormant for nearly a thousand Twinmoons. It waits in a forgotten chamber in Sandcliff Palace, the abandoned Larion Senate stronghold on Eldarn's North Sea. The spell table holds the power to see the people of the five lands safely through the oppression and brutality that have haunted them for generations, but without Lessek's key it is a worthless slab of granite - and Lessek's key itself is just a nondescript stone Steven Taylor and Mark Jenkins overlooked on the night they fell through the far portal into Eldarn.

   Retrieving the key and freeing Eldarn's people rests with Steven Taylor, the would-be sorcerer from Colorado, who is racing across America with Nerak, the fallen Larion dictator, hot on his heels. Steven must reach Idaho Springs and find Lessek's key before it falls into Nerak's hands and is lost for ever - and with it, the lives of untold millions, in both of Steven's worlds.


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‘Could become as legendary as Donaldson’ OUTLAND Nerak is defeated. Steven Taylor has cast the malevolent dictator’s soul into the Fold’s inky void - but the evil that controlled Nerak and brutalised the people of Eldarn has escaped, and taken Mark Jenkins with it. Steven must put his own feelings to one side, for Eldarn’s fate still hangs in the balance, and he remains the land's only real hope.
As he and his companions make their way across country, rallying what remains of their allies, Mark, no longer the affable teacher from Colorado, disappears into the foothills of the Blackstone Mountains, determined to excavate the Larion spell table and use its awesome power to destroy Eldarn.
During an epic sea journey to the enemy strongholds of northern Malakasia, Steven discovers he is stronger than he thought, but a confrontation with Mark is inevitable … Is Steven willing to kill his best friend and face eternal exile in Eldarn to save two worlds from annihilation?
Return to Eldarn for this towering finale, where our heroes face a terrifying army of mutated beasts, and the mysteries of the Larion Senators are waiting to be unlocked, for good or for evil …


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>From a house on the edge of her family's dusty  farmland airstrip near Chicago, the child Cassie  O'Malley would sneak into the night to look at the  planes sitting shimmering in the moonlight. Her  World War I veteran father, Pat, wanted his son to  be a pilot, not his reckless, red-haired  daughter. But it was Cassie who had the gift. Ever since  she could remember, Cassie felt the pull of  getting in a cockpit and taking to the skies.  Observing all the while was her father's junior partner,  Nick "Stick " Galvin, a fellow war ace  and airborne daredevil. Nick would become her  confidant and best friend, willing to break all the  rules to teach her to fly, knowing that the  greatest gift he could give her was the freedom of  flying. When California entrepreneur Desmon Williams  sees Cassie in a local airshow, he invites her to  California where she breaks new ground as a test  pilot. Soon Cassie's record-breaking flights make  her a media darling. Drawn by Desmond's plans for  her to break Amelia Earhardt's records, but  determined to avoid her mistakes, Cassie trains for  the remarkable journey around the world. From  public appearances to press conferences, easily used  by both her husband and the press, Cassie realizes  that there is more to life than making headlines.  Risking her life, pushing herself to her limits,  she decides to chart her own course and pursue  her own destiny, whatever it costs her.   Wings is set in a time of constant change,  when the world was on the brink of war and the  skies were filled with adventurers, a time when  courage and daring forever changed modern-day  aviation.</p>


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<div><h3>From Kirkus Reviews</h3><p>Follett (Night Over Water, 1991; The Pillars of The Earth, 1989, etc.) peeks into the naughty world of late Victorian merchant bankers. A tragic misadventure among schoolboys is at the root of the rotten world of the Pilaster family. Weak bully Edward Pilaster and his too-dear South American chum Mickey Miranda cause the death by drowning of a lad from the lower form at their minor public school and then grow up to become as corrupt as one might expect. Mickey murders his way to a sinecure in the London legation of his nitrate-rich Latin American homeland, and, with much help from his gorgeous, manipulative mum Augusta, Edward bumbles his way to a partnership in the immensely important family bank. The only really good Pilaster, aside from discreetly gay Uncle Samuel, is young Hugh, whose father left the family firm, founded his own bank, and then had to commit suicide when the bank foundered. Hugh is a born banker, but since he's so much smarter than cousin Edward, Aunt Augusta hates him and throws constant obstacles in his path. Against Hugh's advice, Mickey and Edward team up on a series of huge loans to Mickey's government--money that goes to the purchase of war materiel and the advancement of Mickey's thuggish father. On this rotten foundation, the Pilaster bank grows to Imperial preeminence and Augusta gets the earldom she wants for the husband she dislikes. Hugh, pining for the Polish-born, Jewish bareback- rider he loved and lost and still nursing his childhood memory of That Day At The Swimming Hole, gets nothing but grief until those shaky South American bonds finally collapse and he's really needed. Interesting financial tips and a sprinkling of naughty bits, but the rest is minor Masterpiece Theatre. (BOM ??) -- <em>Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.</em></p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Political and amorous intrigues,  cold-blooded murders and financial crises...old-fashioned  entertainment!" -- <em>San Francisco  Chronicle</em>.   </p><p>"Breathlessly plotted...relentlessly  suspensenseful." -- <em>The New York  Times</em>.  </p><p>"Gripping, complex plot..  sexual intrigue...fascinating characters...you won't be  able to put down this exciting page-turner!"  -- <em>Lexington Herald-Leader</em>. </p>

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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>The #1 National Bestseller by the author of <em>The Hammer of Eden</em>  </p><p>His code name: "The Sphinx." His mission: to send Rommel's advancing army the secrets that would unlock the doors to Cairo...and the ultimate Nazi triumph in the war. And in all of Cairo, only two people could stop this brilliant and ruthless Nazi master agent. One was a down-on-his-luck English officer no one would listen to. The other was a young Jewish girl...  </p><p>"Brilliant...breathless high adventure."--_Time_  </p><p>"Magnificent...pulse-racing...the runaway hit of the year."--_People_  </p><ul> <li>     A classic bestselling thriller--now repackaged for a new generation of intrigue seekers  </li></ul><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Ken Follett was only twenty-seven when the wrote The Eye of the Needle, the award-winning novel which became an international bestseller and a distinguished film. Before that he had been a newspaper reporter and a publishing executive after studying philosophy at University College, London. He has since written eleven equally successful novels and the non-fiction bestseller On Wings of Engles. Ken Follett lives with his family in Chelsea, London. </p>


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<div><meta charset="utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; "><h3 style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(176, 163, 119); ">Synopsis</h3><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Praise for Augusten Burroughs</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">"A wrenching, edifying journey...with the added benefit of being really entertaining."</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">- <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">The New York Times Book Review</i> on <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Dry</i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">"Beneath the quick-flowing, funny-sad surface of Burroughs's prose lurks considerable complexity."</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">- <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Time</i> on <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Dry</i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">"A great read."</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">- <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Chicago Sun-Times</i> on <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Dry</i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">"<i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Dry</i> is more than a heartbreaking tale; it's a heroic one."</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">- <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">People</i> on <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Dry</i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">"Laughter on the road to sobriety...for aficionados of outrageous black comedy."</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">- <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">The New York Times</i> on <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Dry</i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">"Bawdy, outrageous...insanely funny (quite literally)...a William Burroughs situation comedy."</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">- <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">The New York Times</i> on <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Running with Scissors</i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">"Running with Scissors, as a memoir in the current conventional sense, makes a good run at blowing every other contender out of the water."</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">- <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">The Washington Post</i> on <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Running with Scissors</i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">"Outrageously amusing...wait until you get a load of this guy's material.... He can consider this a fan letter. Grade A."</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">- <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Entertainment Weekly</i> on <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Running with Scissors</i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">"As funny as it is twisted."</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">- <i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">GQ</i> on<i style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "> Running with Scissors</i></p><h3 style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 12px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(176, 163, 119); ">Publishers Weekly</h3><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">It would be tempting to call these highly personal and uninhibited essays painfully honest, except that Burroughs (Running with Scissors; Dry) is so forthright about his egocentricity that the revelations don't appear to cause him much pain. He approaches his material with a blithe tone that oozes sarcasm and crocodile tears. But the palpable humor of the writing itself endears listeners to him enough that they won't be completely repelled by even Burroughs's ugliest moments (which include his less than gallant reaction to accidentally stepping on a toddler's fingers in a store). His performance is off the cuff, but even when he's at his least humane, he still comes across as all too human. He adopts the same openness that made his previous memoirs-dealing with his bizarre upbringing and battle with addiction-so successful; now, however, he's focusing on less serious subject matter and displaying failings that are more vain. Burroughs excels in his personifications of others, whether portraying a domineering cleaning woman or an overbearing boss. While some may secretly wish for the death of such a boss, though, Burroughs admits openly and proudly that he believes he can will it to happen. That attitude, which is accentuated by his reading, makes this audiobook a true guilty pleasure. Simultaneous release with the St. Martin's hardcover (Forecasts, July 12). (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.</p></span></div>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman, examines the legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa, which was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty thousand people. The effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France. Barometers in Bogotá and Washington, D.C., went haywire. Bodies were washed up in Zanzibar. The sound of the island's destruction was heard in Australia and India and on islands thousands of miles away. Most significant of all -- in view of today's new political climate -- the eruption helped to trigger in Java a wave of murderous anti-Western militancy among fundamentalist Muslims, one of the first outbreaks of Islamic-inspired killings anywhere. Krakatoa gives us an entirely new perspective on this fascinating and iconic event.This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.</p>


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SUMMARY:
Bestselling psychologist Richard Wiseman unravels the science behind our beliefs in telepathy, guardian angels, mediums, ghosts, and more... Scientists and psychologists have always been interested in the supernatural. Over the last few centuries, some have hoped to use science to prove the existence of ghosts, or clairvoyance, or guardian angels, while others have sought to discredit such phenomena. Just as he did in his bestselling 59 Seconds, Professor Richard Wiseman cuts through the hype and takes us on a breathtaking tour of the simple everyday truths behind extraordinary claims; and along the way shows us some really rather remarkable things about the way our brains work... Discover why there are fewer people than usual on trains that crash. Come face to face with talking mongooses, poltergeists and the cleverest horse in the world. Learns how a psychic dog revealed the invisible influences that pervade our everyday lives.


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Recounting the brief, remarkable history of a unified and independent Hawaii, Vowell, a public radio star and bestselling author (The Wordy Shipmates), retraces the impact of New England missionaries who began arriving in the early 1800s to remake the island paradise into a version of New England. In her usual wry tone, Vowell brings out the ironies of their efforts: while the missionaries tried to prevent prostitution with seamen and the resulting deadly diseases, the natives believed it was the missionaries who would kill them: "they will pray us all to death." Along the way, and with the best of intentions, the missionaries eradicated an environmentally friendly, laid-back native culture (although the Hawaiians did have taboos against women sharing a table with men, upon penalty of death, and a reverence for "royal incest"). Freely admitting her own prejudices, Vowell gives contemporary relevance to the past as she weaves in, for instance, Obama's boyhood memories. Outrageous and wise-cracking, educational but never dry, this book is a thought-provoking and entertaining glimpse into the U.S.'s most unusual state and its unanticipated twists on the familiar story of Americanization. (Mar.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>From the bestselling author of <em>The Wordy Shipmates,</em> an examination of Hawaii, the place where Manifest Destiny got a sunburn. </strong>   </p><p>Many think of 1776 as the defining year of American history, when we became a nation devoted to the pursuit of happiness through self- government. In <em>Unfamiliar Fishes,</em> Sarah Vowell argues that 1898 might be a year just as defining, when, in an orgy of imperialism, the United States annexed Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and invaded first Cuba, then the Philippines, becoming an international superpower practically overnight.   </p><p>Among the developments in these outposts of 1898, Vowell considers the Americanization of Hawaii the most intriguing. From the arrival of New England missionaries in 1820, their goal to Christianize the local heathen, to the coup d'état of the missionaries' sons in 1893, which overthrew the Hawaiian queen, the events leading up to American annexation feature a cast of beguiling, and often appealing or tragic, characters: whalers who fired cannons at the Bible-thumpers denying them their God-given right to whores, an incestuous princess pulled between her new god and her brother-husband, sugar barons, lepers, con men, Theodore Roosevelt, and the last Hawaiian queen, a songwriter whose sentimental ode "Aloha 'Oe" serenaded the first Hawaiian president of the United States during his 2009 inaugural parade.   </p><p>With her trademark smart-alecky insights and reporting, Vowell lights out to discover the off, emblematic, and exceptional history of the fiftieth state, and in so doing finds America, warts and all. </p>


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<div><meta charset="utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(80, 80, 80); line-height: 20px; ">Anonymous got lucky. When five of its hackers attacked security company HBGary Federal on February 6, 2011, they were doing so in order to defend the group's privacy. It wasn't because they hoped to reveal plans to attack WikiLeaks, create surveillance cells targeting pro-union organizations, and sell sophisticated rootkits to the US government for use as offensive cyber weapons--but that's what they found.<br><br>In the weeks after the attack, the hackers released tens of thousands of e-mail messages and made headlines around the world. Aaron Bar, the CEO of HBGary Federal, eventually resigned; 12 Congressman called for an investigation; an ethics complaint was lodged against a major DC law firm involved with some of the more dubious plans.<br><br>Join Ars' editors as they dig into the secret world of Anonymous and hackers for hire in Unmasked.</span></div>


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The son of a Cuban exile recounts the remarkable and contradictory life of famed sugar baron Julio Lobo, the richest man in prerevolutionary Cuba and the last of the island's haute bourgeoisie.   Fifty years after the Cuban revolution, the legendary wealth of the sugar magnate Julio Lobo remains emblematic of a certain way of life that came to an abrupt end when Fidel Castro marched into Havana. Known in his day as the King of Sugar, Lobo was for decades the most powerful force in the world sugar market, controlling vast swathes of the island's sugar interests. Born in 1898, the year of Cuba's independence, Lobo's extraordinary life mirrors, in almost lurid technicolor, the many rises and final fall of the troubled Cuban republic.  The details of Lobo's life are fit for Hollywood. He twice cornered the international sugar market and had the largest collection of Napoleonica outside of France, including the emperor's back teeth and death mask. He once faced a firing squad only to be pardoned at the last moment, and later survived a gangland shooting. He courted movie stars from Bette Davis to Joan Fontaine and filled the swimming pool at his sprawling estate with perfume when Esther Williams came to visit.  As Rathbone observes, such are the legends of which revolutions are made, and later justified. But Lobo was also a progressive and a philanthropist, and his genius was so widely acknowledged that Che Guevara personally offered him the position of minister of sugar in the Communist regime. When Lobo declined-knowing that their worldviews could never be compatible-his properties were nationalized, most of his fortune vanished overnight, and he left the island, never to return to his beloved Cuba.  Financial Times journalist John Paul Rathbone has been fascinated by this intoxicating, whirligig, and contradictory prerevolutionary period his entire life. His mother was also a member of Havana's storied haute bourgeoisie and a friend of Lobo's daughters. Woven into Lobo's tale is her family's experience of republic, revolution, and exile, as well as the author's own struggle to come to grips with Cuba's, and his family's, turbulent history.  Prodigiously researched and imaginatively written, The Sugar King of Havana is a captivating portrait of the glittering end of an era, but also of a more hopeful Cuban past, one that might even provide a window into the island's future.


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<h3>Review</h3><p>"'John has audiences rapt with his amazing spiritual revelations' News of the World" </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><em>What happens after we die?</em></p><p>The acclaimed medium takes his talents to new levels and new countries!  For After Life, John and a documentary crew traveled to Australia and across the United States, where he demonstrated once again that grief, healing, and hope are eternally intertwined. He answers his fans' most-asked questions about the mediumship process and how it works, while revealing his own personal life as a husband and new father. Edward also shares what he’s learned through his own personal losses and demonstrates that it’s never too late to forgive…and never too far away to love. </p><p>John also connects with celebrities both here and on the other side.</p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>With the real Thursday Next missing, the "written" Thursday Next leaves her book to undertake an assignment for the Jurisfiction Accident Investigation Department, in Fforde's wild and wacky sixth BookWorld novel (after Thursday Next: First Among Sequels). As written Thursday Next finds herself playing roles intended for her real counterpart, BookWorld's elite try to deal with a border dispute between Racy Novel and Women's Fiction. It's not always possible to know where one is in BookWorld, which has been drastically remade, or in Fforde's book, which shares the madcap makeup of Alice in Wonderland, even borrowing Alice's dodo. Outrageous puns (e.g., a restaurant called Inn Uendo) and clever observations relating to the real book world (e.g., the inhabitants of "Vanity" island now prefer Self-Published or Collaborative) abound. Fforde's diabolical meshing of insight and humor makes a "mimefield" both frightening and funny, while the reader must traverse a volume that's a minefield of unexpected and amusing twists. 10-city author tour. (Mar.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>The newest tour de force from <em>The New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>Thursday Next</em> and <em>Shades of Grey</em>. </strong>   </p><p>Jasper Fforde's exuberant return to the fantastical BookWorld opens during a time of great unrest. All-out Genre war is rumbling, and the BookWorld desperately needs a heroine like Thursday Next. But with the real Thursday apparently retired to the Realworld, the Council of Genres turns to the written Thursday.   </p><p>The Council wants her to pretend to be the real Thursday and travel as a peacekeeping emissary to the warring factions. A trip up the mighty Metaphoric River beckons-a trip that will reveal a fiendish plot that threatens the very fabric of the BookWorld itself.   </p><p>Once again <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author Jasper Fforde has a field day gleefully blending satire, romance, and thriller with literary allusions galore in a fantastic adventure through the landscape of a frisky and fertile imagination. Fans will rejoice that their favorite character in the Fforde universe is back. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The little-known world of art theft is compellingly portrayed in Dolnick's account of the 1994 theft and recovery of Edvard Munch's iconic painting <em>The Scream.</em> The theft was carried out with almost comical ease at Norway's National Gallery in Oslo on the very morning that the Winter Olympics began in that city. Despite the low-tech nature of the crime, the local police were baffled, and Dolnick (_Down the Great Unknown_;_ Madness on the Couch_) makes a convincing case that the fortunate resolution of the investigation was almost exclusively due to the expertise, ingenuity and daring of the "rescue artist" of the title: Charley Hill, a Scotland Yard undercover officer and former Fulbright scholar who has made recovering stolen art treasures his life's work. Hill is a larger-than-life figure who seems lifted from the pages of Elmore Leonard, although his adversaries in this inquiry are fairly pedestrian. While the path to the painting's retrieval is relatively straightforward once some shady characters put the word out that they can get their hands on it, the narrative's frequent detours to other crimes and engaging escapades from Hill's past elevate this work above last year's similar <em>The Irish Game</em> by Matthew Hart. 16 pages of b&amp;w and 8 pages of color photos not seen by <em>PW</em>. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Adult/High School–A compelling account of the 1994 theft of one of the world's most famous paintings, <em>The Scream</em>. Dolnick focuses on the hero of the case, Scotland Yard's Art Squad specialist Charley Hill. Because of Hill's earlier success in retrieving stolen art treasures, he was charged with the difficult job of locating the painting and successfully retrieving it in its original condition. While the author keeps readers in suspense as he digresses frequently to tell the story of other notorious art thefts and art thieves, diligent readers will be treated to a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat account of the painting's rescue. Along the way, Dolnick imparts a great deal of information not only about Edvard Munch, but also about the art world's surprisingly lax security measures and the lack of motivation on the part of authorities charged with retrieving art treasures. In spite of the asides, this is a tightly woven, fast-paced story. Teens interested in art and/or investigative journalism will enjoy this real-life whodunit._–Catherine Gilbride, Farifax County Public Library, VA_ <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Nash culls reminiscences from long-term girlfriends, starlets like Ann-Margret and Cybill Shepherd, and assorted strippers, showgirls and groupies for this gossipy, besotted biography of rock's original sex god. They attest to the allure that had females lining up for access to the young Elvis's bed: devastating looks, pelvic gyrations and a bad-boy sneer combined with a romantic soul, sublime kissing technique and a courtliness that lulled parents into handing over their underage daughters. (He was attracted to 14-year-old brunettes, Nash argues, like future wife Priscilla.) And there's the indefinable magnetism—i.e., celebrity—that kept them coming through the drugs and debauchery, the bizarre monologues and random gunplay, the impotence and incontinence and vomit and bloat of the King's declining years. Nash's mix of breathless melodrama (his voice was soft and sensuous, and he had a mischievous grin on his face, and he was looking straight at her) with rote psychoanalysis (Elvis could never really let go of [his mother] Gladys) often reads like a fan magazine. Her shallow but vivid portrait nonetheless manages to evoke much of what made Elvis so enthralling. <em>(Jan. 5)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“The most comprehensive work ever on how the women in Presley’s life…influenced him and his music.” (New York Newsday )  </p><p>“Deliciously gossipy but never mean, revealingly intimate but never leering, Baby, Let’s Play House is a masterwork of psycho-sexual history neatly disguised as celebrity journalism.” (David Hajdu, author of Positively 4th Street, music critic for The New Republic, and professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism David Hajdu, author of Positively 4th Street, music critic for The New Republic, and professor at Co )  </p><p>“In this astounding look at the King’s unstoppable pursuit of women from his elementary school days until his untimely death at 42, hundreds of girls and women pass through the revolving doors of Elvis’ love life.” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution )  </p><p>“Un-put-downabble.” (Jezebel.com )  </p><p>“Alanna Nash meticulously documents and explores all the relationships Elvis had with women that were ‘extremely special,’ as Ann-Margret so delightfully (and euphemistically) phrases it. I was delighted to see my stepmother, June Carter, make an appearance, as she always became uncharacteristically silent when Elvis’ name came up in conversation. Nash belongs in the pantheon of great music writers, and this book is a fascinating study (Rosanne Cash )  </p><p>“An exhaustive and penetrating work that functions as an intimate personal profile, a family study and a psychosexual investigation of one of the 20th century’s true cultural icons.” (Memphis Commercial Appeal )  </p><p>“Alanna Nash…turns her eye toward The King’s other women in a psychological history ...Among those who loved him tender - Ann-Margret and Cybill Shepherd. Those who turned him down include Cher and Karen Carpenter. And of course, there’s plenty on the No. 1 woman in his life - Mom Gladys Presley.” (New York Post )  </p><p>“By far the best study of Elvis Presley I have read. ‘The King’ emerges more clearly from this mosaic of his troubled love life than from any linear biography to date.Impressively researched, written--and felt.” (Philip Norman, New York Times bestselling author of John Lennon and Shout! )  </p><p>“What’s left to say about Elvis? Plenty, if Alanna Nash is on the case. She rips the satin sheets right off the King, resulting in the most entertaining Elvis book ever. Ann-Margret! Raquel Welch! Barbara Eden! Tura Satana! This is very funny book.” (Jimmy McDonough, New York Times bestselling author of Shakey: Neil Young's Biography )  </p><p>“A frank and fascinating portrait of an essentially lonely man...[told] with grace and intelligence...The work of a master.” (Louisville Courier Journal )  </p><p>“Alanna Nash’s long look at Elvis’ bizarre history with women...collect[s] all the madness, badness and sadness of the Elvis myth in one exhaustive and embarrassingly tempting volume.” (New York Times )  </p><p>“If anything, Baby, Let’s Play House heightens the heartbreaking aspects of Presley’s life.” (Los Angeles Times )  </p><p>“A major new contribution to Presley lore...[Alanna Nash’s] focus on Presley’s relationships with women takes us on a long and often fascinating journey...It’s a welcome and well-crafted addition to our understanding of his strange, triumphant and tragic life.” (The Globe and Mail )  </p><p>“New girls slip between [Elvis’] satin sheets on nearly every page...Combine that with an absorbing snapshot section, and [Baby, Let’s Play House] will leave you all shook up.” (BettyConfidential.com ) </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>"I don't like my mother. She's not a good person." So declares Ginny Young on a trip to California to visit her mother, Marion, whom she hasn't seen in 35 years. Ginny is only making the trip as a favor to her sister, Sharla, who has called to say she's awaiting the results of a cancer test. In flashback, Berg (Talk Before Sleep) revisits the events of the girls' childhood and the moments when their mother's problems began to reveal themselves. One night, Ginny and Sharla overhear their mother screaming at their father about her unhappiness and telling him that she never wanted children. Then she walks out with no explanations, returning briefly a few months later to explain that she's not coming back. The following years bring occasional visits that are impossibly painful for all concerned and so full of buried anger that the girls decide to curtail them altogether. When Sharla meets Ginny (now a mother herself) at the airport, and the two see their mother again, there are surprises in store, but not especially shocking ones. The reader, in fact, may feel there is less here than meets the eye: Marion's flight is never made psychologically credible. Berg's customary skill in rendering domestic details is intact, but the story seems stitched together. Crucial scenes feel highlighted rather than fleshed out, and Ginny's bitterness disappears into thin air as she reaches a facile, sentimental conclusion about her mother's needs. BOMC selection; author tour. <br />Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Berg (Joy School, LJ 12/96) excels at writing novels about the close personal relationships between women. As this new work opens, Ginny is flying to California to join her sister in a meeting with their mother, whom neither daughter has seen for 35 years. Ginny uses her travel time to reflect upon her memories of the summer when her mother withdrew from the family and became an outsider in her daughters' lives. Berg's precise, evocative descriptions create vivid images of Ginny's physical world, while Berg's understanding and perception are an eloquent testimony to Ginny's emotional turmoil. Berg cleverly examines the roles and relationships of mothers and daughters and reveals how truth, forgiveness, and understanding are possible in healing intergenerational rifts between women. Highly recommended and sure to be popular.<br /><em>-?Caroline M. Hallsworth, Cambrian Coll., Ontario</em><br />Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Faced with an ork invasion of Piscina IV, the 3rd Company of the Dark Angels believes the threat to be minimal. As enemy numbers continue to increase, their commander, Captain Belial, insists that his Company are strong enough to resist. But Scout-Sergeant Naaman knows just how dangerous this foe can be, and when a renewed greenskin offensive takes the Dark Angels by surprise, the orks swarm towards Kadillus Harbour. Little do the Dark Angels know of the technological power available to the xenos, and the true scale of the threat they face. Belial, Naaman and their fellow Astartes fight a desperate siege at Kadillus, knowing that they must hold out until Imperial reinforcements arrive or the planet will be lost. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Gav Thorpe has been rampaging across the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 fro many years as both an author and games developer.  His works include the hugely popular <strong><em>Angels of Darkness</em></strong>, the <strong><em>Last Chancers</em></strong> series and the ongoing epic tale of <strong><em>The Sundering</em></strong>. </p>

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<div><meta charset="utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px; ">When Damnos is hit by cataclysmic earthquakes, an ancient force is awakened. Deep beneath the earth, the necrons rise from their slumber to decimate the human populace. All appears lost until salvation comes from the heavens – the Ultramarines brave an orbital bombardment to deploy their forces on Damnos, led by two legendary warriors – Captain Cato Sicarius and Chief Librarian Tigurius. They are the planets last, great hope against the remorseless alien foes, but tensions within their ranks threaten to derail victory. As battle rages on Damnos, and the Ultramarines seek to defeat their soulless enemies, Tigurius receives a terrible vision – a vision telling of the death of a hero…</span></div>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. This well-crafted and timely thriller uncovers a terrorist plot stretching from the Middle East to the American West. When recently widowed Mountie Dan Graham pulls a dying girl from a river, her tremulous last words lead Dan to track down the girl's father, a washed-up conspiracy theorist reporter who has finally stumbled upon a genuine conspiracy. California bookseller Maggie Conlin searches for her husband, traumatized Iraq war contractor Jake, who has kidnapped their young son, Logan, and fled to Montana. Samara Ingram, an Iraqi-British nurse whose husband and son were brutally murdered in Baghdad by renegade Western troops, takes slow steps toward retribution. Mofina (_Every Fear_) shifts smoothly and deftly among their stories until all three are drawn together in the final, suspense-packed rush to prevent a devastating moment of destruction and revenge. <em>(Jan.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>This well-crafted and timely thriller uncovers a terrorist plot stretching from the Middle East to the American West. When recently widowed Mountie Dan Graham pulls a dying girl from a river, her tremulous last words lead Dan to track down the girl's father, a washed-up conspiracy theorist reporter who has finally stumbled upon a genuine conspiracy. California bookseller Maggie Conlin searches for her husband, traumatized Iraq war contractor Jake, who has kidnapped their young son, Logan, and fled to Montana. Samara Ingram, an Iraqi-British nurse whose husband and son were brutally murdered in Baghdad by renegade Western troops, takes slow steps toward retribution. Mofina (Every Fear) shifts smoothly and deftly among their stories until all three are drawn together in the final, suspense-packed rush to prevent a devastating moment of destruction and revenge. (Jan.) --Publishers Weekly </p>

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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Confirming the promise of Sex and Sunsets and Western Swing , Sandlin has created a lighthearted, amusing and tender story of preteen wisdom, adult immaturity and the fine line between. It's 1963 when 13-year-old Sam Callahan and his tart-tongued, divorced, misbehaving mother, Lydia, are banished to the hick town of GroVont, Wyo., by Lydia's Southern-gentleman father, Casper. The only other intelligent sixth-grader in GroVont is spirited, pretty Maurey Pierce. Sharing their books, Sam and Maurey set out to discover what happens in the lost paragraphs between the first kiss and the happily ever after. With some coaching from liberated Lydia, the kids begin practicing for their first real sexual experience. Complications arise when Sam--envisioning romantic futures in the humorous, perceptive short stories he writes--finds himself in love with Maurey. Strong-willed Maurey, however, insists that they pair off with others for "normal" dating, even after she discovers she's pregnant. Hilarious teenage dating scenes are neatly contrasted with Lydia's unwise romantic entanglements and the pathetic snobbery of small-town social cliques. Narrated in Sam's adolescent voice--authentic in its tone and use of the vernacular--this offbeat, engaging novel elicits nonstop chuckles and, sometimes, a tear or two. <br>Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Sandlin ( Western Swing, LJ 4/1/88) continues his quirky brand of humor in a Western setting, but unfortunately with less originality and freshness. Thirteen- year-old Sam Callahan's wild mother Lydia has displeased her father (who controls the purse strings) and so is banished from South Carolina to the quiet town of GroVont, Wyoming. She spends most of her time sitting around being disdainfully witty and drinking gin while son Sam writes short stories. Along comes precocious adolescent Maurey Pierce, who decides it's time she lost her virginity. Sam and Maurey experiment under liberal Lydia's roof; then Maurey gets pregnant. When she goes for an abortion and finds her mother there, all hell breaks loose. Though wittily told (sometimes to the point of being too cutesy), this is reminiscent of Larry McMurtry's The Last Pic ture Show , but kinkier, in its depiction of the decay and hypocrisy behind the seemingly benign facade of small-town life. Basically, it's been done before. A marginal purchase.<br><em>- Rosellen Brewer, Monterey Cty. Free Libs., Seaside, Cal.</em><br>Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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