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Novel Bookstore By: Cosse, Laurence
When French author Cossé (A Corner of the Veil, 1999, etc.) pairs unlikely business partners in the opening of a unique Parisian bookstore, The Good Novel, that will sell only the best fiction, their venture succeeds and draws vehement criticism—and worse. The selection process at The Good Novel, owned and backed by the lovely Aldo-Valbella Francesca and run by Ivan Georg, is rigorous. Members of a secret committee of writers and bibliophiles compile novels that they consider superior to the usual bestseller-list folderol. Their bookstore is a success. But almost immediately detractors publish diatribes accusing The Good Novel's proprietors and denizens of snobbery. Worse, someone is pasting these attacks up around town. When attempts are made against the lives of several members of the selection committee, Ivan and Francesca turn to the law in the person of a publishing-industry veteran turned cop, Gonzague Heffner, to determine how it is that seemingly coordinated thugs have learned the meticulously concealed identities of committee members. Is there a centralized plot by publishing interests to overthrow the upstart store, or are these the isolated jabs of irate inferior writers who take issue with the store's exclusive policies? As the investigation unfolds, rival bookstores open, initially strong sales falter, and it becomes clear that the attacks are a reaction to the very concept of quality in literature. This mystery is however incidental to larger themes of what superlative work in the literary sphere constitutes. Not without its surprises, the book doesn't quite live up to the high literary standards that its characters apply. While the central mystery stalls and dissipates without satisfactory resolution, the central conceit—what place is there for great and often difficult literature in a mercenary world—is manifest in the plight of the store and the disruptive influence it has on critics and booksellers the world over. The book's real strength is its romances—of both the bookish and human varieties. In attention to matters of the heart the story is redeemed, delivering a touché where its original thrust misses the mark. A literary idyll preselected for bookworms and bibliophiles.
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Penguin ISBN: 9781933372822 $15 Click above to Buy. |
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Hector And The Search For Happiness By: Lelord, Francois
A charming fable about modern life that has touched the hearts of more than two million readers worldwide. Following on the success of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and already a worldwide sensation, Hector and the Search for Happiness finally comes to America, where readers will delight in its uplifting humor. As Hector travels from Paris to China to the United States, he keeps a list of observations about the people he meets, hoping to find the secret to happiness. Combining the winsome appeal of The Little Prince with the inspiring philosophy of The Alchemist, Hector's journey around the world and into the human soul is entertaining, empowering, and smile inducing-as winning in its optimism as it is powerful in its insight and reassuring in its simplicity.
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Penguin ISBN: 9780143118398 $14 Click above to Buy. |
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Chronic City By: Lethem, Jonathan
The acclaimed author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude returns with a roar with this gorgeous, searing portrayal of Manhattanites wrapped in their own delusions, desires, and lies. Chase Insteadman, a handsome, inoffensive fixture on Manhattan's social scene, lives off residuals earned as a child star on a beloved sitcom called Martyr & Pesty. Chase owes his current social cachet to an ongoing tragedy much covered in the tabloids: His teenage sweetheart and fiancée, Janice Trumbull, is trapped by a layer of low-orbit mines on the International Space Station, from which she sends him rapturous and heartbreaking love letters. Like Janice, Chase is adrift, she in Earth's stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctuated by Upper East Side dinner parties. Into Chase's cloistered city enters Perkus Tooth, a wall-eyed free-range pop critic whose soaring conspiratorial riffs are fueled by high-grade marijuana, mammoth cheeseburgers, and a desperate ache for meaning. Perkus's countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw Chase into another Manhattan, where questions of what is real, what is fake, and who is complicit take on a life-shattering urgency. Along with Oona Laszlo, a self-loathing ghostwriter, and Richard Abneg, a hero of the Tompkins Square Park riot now working as a fixer for the billionaire mayor, Chase and Perkus attempt to unearth the answers to several mysteries that seem to offer that rarest of artifacts on an island where everything can be bought: Truth. Like Manhattan itself, Jonathan Lethem's masterpiece is beautiful and tawdry, tragic and forgiving, devastating and antic, a stand-in for the whole world and a place utterly unique.
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Random House / Vintage ISBN: 9780307277527 $15.95 Click above to Buy. |
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Baking Cakes In Kigali By: Parkin, Gaile
Once in a great while a debut novelist comes along who dazzles us with rare eloquence and humanity, who takes us to bold new places and into previously unimaginable lives. Gaile Parkin is just such a talent—and Baking Cakes in Kilgali is just such a novel. This gloriously written tale—set in modern-day Rwanda—introduces one of the most singular and engaging characters in recent fiction: Angel Tungaraza—mother, cake baker, keeper of secrets—a woman living on the edge of chaos, finding ways to transform lives, weave magic, and create hope amid the madness swirling all around her. In Kigali, Angel runs a bustling business: baking cakes for all occasions—cakes filled with vibrant color, buttery richness, and, most of all, a sense of hope only Angel can deliver.…A CIA agent’s wife seeks the perfect holiday cake but walks away with something far sweeter…a former boy-soldier orders an engagement cake, then, between sips of tea, shares an enthralling story…weary human rights workers…lovesick limo drivers. Amid this cacophony of native tongues, love affairs, and confessions, Angel’s kitchen is an oasis where people tell their secrets, where hope abounds and help awaits. In this unlikely place, in the heart of Rwanda, unexpected things are beginning to happen: A most unusual wedding is planned…a heartbreaking mystery—involving Angel’s own family—unravels…and extraordinary connections are being made among the men and women who have tasted Angel’s beautiful cakes…as a chain of events unfolds that will change Angel’s life—and the lives of those around her—in the most astonishing ways.
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Random House / Bantam ISBN: 9780385343442 $15 Click above to Buy. |
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Bridge Of Peace By: Woodsmall, Cindy
Love alone isn’t enough to overcome the obstacles between a man and a woman. From New York Times best-selling author Cindy Woodsmall, comes an invitation into Amish country Lena Kauffman is a young Old Order Amish schoolteacher who has dealt all her life with attention raised by a noticeable birthmark on her cheek. Having learned to move past the stares and whispers, Lena channels her zest for living into her love of teaching. But tensions mount as she is challenged to work with a rebellious young man and deal with several crises at the schoolhouse that threaten her other students. Her lack of submission and the use of ideas that don’t line up with the Old Ways strengthen the school board’s case as they begin to believe that Lena is behind all the trouble. One member of the school board, Grey Graber, feels trapped by his own stifling circumstances. His wife Elsie has shut him out of her life, and he doesn’t know how long he can continue to live as if nothing is wrong. As the two finally come to a place of working toward a better marriage, tragedy befalls their family. Lena and Grey have been life-long friends but their relationship begins to crumble amidst unsettling deceptions, propelling each of them to finally face their own secrets. Can they both find a way past their losses and discover the strength to build a new bridge?
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Random House / Waterbrook ISBN: 9781400073979 $13.99 Click above to Buy. |
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The Outside Boy By: Jeanine Cummins
Christy Hurley, a young gypsy in 1950s Ireland, is treated as an outsider after his father tries to settle in a single town and the boy finds himself questioning who he is and where he belongs after discovering a family secret. Original.
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Penguin / New American Library ISBN: 9780451229489 $15 Click above to Buy. |
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The White Queen By: Philippa Gregory
Philippa Gregory, "the queen of royal fiction" (USA Today) Presents the first of a new series set amid the deadly feuds of England known as the Wars of the Roses. Brother turns on brother to win the ultimate prize, the throne of England, in this dazzling account of the wars of the Plantagenets. They are the claimants and kings who ruled England before the Tudors, and now Philippa Gregory brings them to life through the dramatic and intimate stories of the secret players: the indomitable women, starting with Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen. The White Queen tells the story of a woman of extraordinary beauty and ambition who, catching the eye of the newly crowned boy king, marries him in secret and ascends to royalty. While Elizabeth rises to the demands of her exalted position and fights for the success of her family, her two sons become central figures in a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries: the missing princes in the Tower of London whose fate is still unknown. From her uniquely qualified perspective, Philippa Gregory explores this most famous unsolved mystery of English history, informed by impeccable research and framed by her inimitable storytelling skills. With The White Queen, Philippa Gregory brings the artistry and intellect of a master writer and storyteller to a new era in history and begins what is sure to be another bestselling classic series from this beloved author.
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Simon & Schuster / Touchstone ISBN: 9781416563693 $14.99 Click above to Buy. |
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Pictures at an Exhibition By: Sara Houghteling
Max Berenzon’s father is the most successful art dealer in Paris, owner of the Berenzon Gallery, home to both Picasso and Matisse. To Max’s great surprise, his father forbids him from entering the family business, choosing instead to hire a beautiful and brilliant gallery assistant named Rose Clément. When Paris falls to the Nazis, the Berenzons survive in hiding, but when they return in 1944 their gallery is empty, their priceless collection vanished. In a city darkened by corruption and black martketers, Max chases his twin obsessions: the lost paintings and Rose Clement.
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Random House / Vintage ISBN: 9780307386304 $15 Click above to Buy. |
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Wild Indigo By: Sandi Ault
Bureau of Land Management Agent Jamaica Wild has witnessed the death of a Tanoah Pueblo man who was trampled by buffalo. After the tribal government and local paper make allegations that Jamaica caused the stampede, she is determined to solve this mystery. But what is revealed is a greater secret regarding Tanoah Pueblo-one that threatens its future and its past.
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Penguin ISBN: 9780425219010 $7.99 Click above to Buy. |
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Wild Inferno By: Sandi Ault
Wild Indigo introduced rough and ready Bureau of Land Management agent Jamaica Wild and her wolf, Mountain. Now they return, deployed to a wildfire on the Southern Ute reservation, where a puzzling plea whispered by a burning man points to a mystery more menacing than murder.
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Penguin ISBN: 9780425226384 $7.99 Click above to Buy. |
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Wild Sorrow By: Sandi Ault
The Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author returns with BLM agent Jamaica Wild. In the midst of tracking a wounded mountain lion, Jamaica is forced to seek refuge in an old abandoned Indian School when a snowstorm hits. Exploring, Jamaica discovers the desecrated body of an elderly Anglo woman, frozen on the floor. After the storm, the FBI takes over the murder investigation, but Jamaica remains haunted by the frozen woman. As the dead of winter settles, arctic temperatures threaten the survival of the mountain lions-but time reveals that there is something far more dangerous tracking Jamaica... In the midst of tracking a wounded mountain lion, Jamaica is forced to seek refuge in an old abandoned Indian School when a snowstorm hits. Exploring, Jamaica discovers the desecrated body of an elderly Anglo woman, frozen on the floor. After the storm, the FBI takes over the murder investigation, but Jamaica remains haunted by the frozen woman. As the dead of winter settles, arctic temperatures threaten the survival of the mountain lions-but time reveals that there is something far more dangerous tracking Jamaica…
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Penguin ISBN: 9780425232637 $14 Click above to Buy. |
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Let the Great World Spin By: Colum McCann
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER 2009 An American masterpiece from internationally bestselling novelist Colum McCann—a dazzling and hauntingly rich vision of the loveliness, pain, and mystery of New York City in the 1970s
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NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER 2009 Random House ISBN: 9780812973990 $15 Click above to Buy. |
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Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet By: Jamie Ford
Set in Seattle, this novel moves in time between World War II and the 1980's. It is truly a bittersweet love story about a Chinese boy and a Japanese girl amid the chaos of the internments and the prejudice of their Old World families and their white schoolmates.
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Ballantine / Random House ISBN: 9780345505347 $15 Click above to Buy. |
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Dead Until Dark By: Charlaine Harris
Love blossoms between Sookie Stackhouse, a cocktail waitress who keeps to herself because of her ability to read minds, and Bill, a vampire with ties to a crowd that may be responsible for the death of one of Sookie's coworkers.
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Ace / Penguin ISBN: 9780441018253 $14 Click above to Buy. |
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society By: Mary Ann Shaffer
January 1946: writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a stranger, a founding member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. And so begins a remarkable tale of the island of Guernsey during the German occupation, and of a society as extraordinary as its name.
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Dial / Random House ISBN: 9780385341004 $14 Click above to Buy. |
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A Guide to the Birds of East Africa By: Nicholas Drayson
For the past three years, Mr. Malik has been secretly in love with Rose Mbikwa, a woman who leads the weekly bird walks sponsored by the East African Ornithological Society. Just as Malik is getting up the nerve to invite Rose to the Nairobi Hunt Club Ball (the premier social occasion of the Kenyan calendar), Harry Khan, a nemesis from his school days, arrives in town. Khan has also become enraptured with Rose and announces his intent to invite her to the Ball. Rather than force Rose to choose between the two men, a clever solution is proposed. Whoever can identify the most species of birds in one week’s time gets the privilege of asking Ms. Mbikwa to the ball. Drayson's charming descriptions of the Kenyan wildlife and his sharp take on the foibles and follies of the people and politics sketch a rich picture of contemporary life in Nairobi. Fans of Alexander McCall Smith will delight in this transporting and witty novel.
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Mariner / Houghton Mifflin ISBN: 9780547247953 $13.95 Click above to Buy. |
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Scarpetta By: Patricia Cornwell
Leaving behind her Charleston forensic pathology practice to accept an assignment in New York City, Kay Scarpetta learns the story of an injured psychiatric patient who claims he was attacked by a stalker who was killing someone else at the time. A best-selling novel.
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Penguin ISBN: 9780425230169 $9.99 Click above to Buy. |
