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books tagged “21st century”
books tagged “21st century”
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5 Novels: Alan Mendelsohn the Boy from Mars, Slaves of Spiegel, the Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, the Last Guru, Young Adult Novelby Daniel PinkwaterISBN 0374423296 (0-374-42329-6)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: '5 Novels: Alan Mendelsohn the Boy from Mars, Slaves of Spiegel, the Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, the Last Guru, Young Adult Novel'Book summary:There are many words that could be used to describe Daniel Pinkwater's books. Wacky comes to mind. Outrageous. Lively. Real. Unreal. Comic genius Jules Feiffer, in his foreword to 5 Novels, says, "Pinkwater's thoughts don't connect like yours or mine. His 'tab A' does not fit into 'slot A' the way it's supposed to in a well-thought-out thought. More likely, his 'tab A' will fit into 'slot 14' or 'slot X79,' the kind of fit that might drive you or me crazy if we tried it, but when Pinkwater does it, you read it and say to yourself, 'Why, of course, this is how it should be.'"
Performing chickens, a New Jersey Martian, an orangutan orchestra conductor from Ceylon ... the details are what jump out of his novels. The ice cream dish in Slaves of Spiegel, for example, consisting of an eggplant, two slabs of whole-wheat pizza dough, 16 flavors of ice cream, fresh figs, pistachio nuts, a lobster, and assorted fresh garden vegetables and fruit. (It's served piping hot from the microwave, in a freshly laundered regulation army knapsack, to the accompaniment of Franz Liszt music.) This is what Pinkwater is all about. A junior-high schooler's dream of an author.
In 5 Novels, you can feast upon five beloved and quirky favorites: Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, Slaves of Spiegel, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, The Last Guru, and Young Adult Novel. And if you still need more Pinkwater novels (and you definitely do), explore 4 Fantastic Novels. (Ages 9 and much, much older.) --Emilie Coulter [via]
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Angel Rockby Darren WilliamsISBN 0375414517 (0-375-41451-7)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Angels & Demonsby Dan BrownISBN 037543318X (0-375-43318-X)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Angels & Demons'Book summary:It takes guts to write a novel that combines an ancient secret brotherhood, the Swiss Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, a papal conclave, mysterious ambigrams, a plot against the Vatican, a mad scientist in a wheelchair, particles of antimatter, jets that can travel 15,000 miles per hour, crafty assassins, a beautiful Italian physicist, and a Harvard professor of religious iconology. It takes talent to make that novel anything but ridiculous. Kudos to Dan Brown (Digital Fortress) for achieving the nearly impossible. Angels & Demons is a no-holds-barred, pull-out-all-the-stops, breathless tangle of a thriller--think Katherine Neville's The Eight (but cleverer) or Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (but more accessible).
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is shocked to find proof that the legendary secret society, the Illuminati--dedicated since the time of Galileo to promoting the interests of science and condemning the blind faith of Catholicism--is alive, well, and murderously active. Brilliant physicist Leonardo Vetra has been murdered, his eyes plucked out, and the society's ancient symbol branded upon his chest. His final discovery, antimatter, the most powerful and dangerous energy source known to man, has disappeared--only to be hidden somewhere beneath Vatican City on the eve of the election of a new pope. Langdon and Vittoria, Vetra's daughter and colleague, embark on a frantic hunt through the streets, churches, and catacombs of Rome, following a 400-year-old trail to the lair of the Illuminati, to prevent the incineration of civilization.
Brown seems as much juggler as author--there are lots and lots of balls in the air in this novel, yet Brown manages to hurl the reader headlong into an almost surreal suspension of disbelief. While the reader might wish for a little more sardonic humor from Langdon, and a little less bombastic philosophizing on the eternal conflict between religion and science, these are less fatal flaws than niggling annoyances--readers should have no trouble skimming past them and immersing themselves in a heck of a good read. "Brain candy" it may be, but my! It's tasty. --Kelly Flynn [via]
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The Ash Gardenby Dennis BockISBN 0375413022 (0-375-41302-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Basket Caseby Carl HiaasenISBN 0375411070 (0-375-41107-0)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Basket Case'Book summary:Take one dead rock & roll star, his Courtney Love-type widow, the mysterious deaths of his former bandmates, and the lost tracks of a comeback album. Stir in Jack Tagger, a middle-aged investigative reporter obsessed with death since his banishment to the obit desk; a fetching young editor with a yen for our hero; and a boss looking for a reason to fire him. Put them in the hands of a master like Carl Hiaasen, who adds his trademark flourishes (who else would use a frozen lizard as a weapon?) to a creaky plot like this one, and the result is a winner. Florida is full of caper writers with journalistic credentials, and plenty of them have a deft hand with quirky characters, but no one in the genre is better than Hiaasen. --Jane Adams [via]
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The Bear and the Dragonby Tom ClancyISBN 0375430695 (0-375-43069-5)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Bear and the Dragon'Book summary:Power is delightful, and absolute power should be absolutely delightful--but not when you're the most powerful man on earth and the place is ticking like a time bomb. Jack Ryan, CIA warrior turned U.S. president, is the man in the hot seat, and in this vast thriller he's up to his nostrils in crazed Asian warlords, Russian thugs, nukes that won't stay put, and authentic, up-to-the-nanosecond technology as complex as the characters' motives are simple. Quick, do you know how to reprogram the software in an Aegis missile seekerhead? Well, if you're Jack Ryan, you'd better find someone who does, or an incoming ballistic may rain fallout on your parade. Bad for reelection prospects. "You know, I don't really like this job very much," Ryan complains to his aide Arnie van Damm, who replies, "Ain't supposed to be fun, Jack."
But you bet The Bear and the Dragon is fun--over 1,000 swift pages' worth. In the opening scene, a hand-launched RPG rocket nearly blows up Russia's intelligence chief in his armored Mercedes, and Ryan's clever spooks report that the guy who got the rocket in his face instead was the hoodlum "Rasputin" Avseyenko, who used to run the KGB's "Sparrow School" of female prostitute spies. Soon after, two apparent assassins are found handcuffed together afloat in St. Petersburg's Neva River, their bloated faces resembling Pokémon toys.
The stakes go higher as the mystery deepens: oil and gold are discovered in huge quantities in Siberia, and the evil Chinese Minister Without Portfolio Zhang Han San gazes northward with lust. The laid-off elite of the Soviet Army figure in the brewing troubles, as do the new generation of Tiananmen Square dissidents, Zhang's wily, Danielle Steel-addicted executive secretary Lian Ming, and Chester Nomuri, a hip, Internet-porn-addicted CIA agent posing in China as a Japanese computer salesman. He e-mails his CIA boss, Mary Pat "the Cowgirl" Foley, that he intends to seduce Ming with Dream Angels perfume and scarlet Victoria's Secret lingerie ordered from the catalog--strictly for God and country, of course. Soon Ming is calling him "Master Sausage" instead of "Comrade," but can anybody master Ming?
The plot is over the top, with devastating subplots erupting all over the globe and lurid characters scaring the wits out of each other every few pages, but Clancy finds time to insert hard-boiled little lessons on the vileness of Communism, the infuriating intrusions of the press on presidential power, the sexual perversions of Mao, the poor quality of Russian pistol silencers ("garbage, cans loaded with steel wool that self-destructed after less than ten shots"), the folly of cutting a man's throat with a knife ("they flop around and make noise when you do that"), and similar topics. Naturally, the book bristles like a battlefield with intriguingly intricate military hardware.
When you've got a Tom Clancy novel in hand, who needs action movies? --Tim Appelo [via]
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Border Crossingby Pat BarkerISBN 0374181152 (0-374-18115-2)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The City of Your Final Destinationby Peter CameronISBN 0374281971 (0-374-28197-1)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion And Occupation of Iraqby Michael R. Gordon, Bernard E. TrainorISBN 0375422625 (0-375-42262-5)
Hardcover, Pantheon Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion And Occupation of Iraq'Book summary:Informed by unparalleled access to still-secret documents, interviews with top field commanders, and a review of the military's own internal after-action reports, Cobra II is the definitive chronicle of America's invasion and occupation of Iraq-a conflict that could not be lost but one that the United States failed to win decisively. From the Pentagon to the White House to the American command centers in the field, the book reveals the inside story of how the war was actually planned and fought. Drawing on classified United States government intelligence, it also provides a unique account of how Saddam Hussein and his high command developed and prosecuted their war strategy.
Written by Michael R. Gordon, the chief military correspondent for The New York Times, who spent the war with the Allied land command, and Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general and former director of the National Security Program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cobra II traces the interactions among the generals, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and President George W. Bush. It dramatically reconstructs the principal battles from interviews with those who fought them, providing reliable accounts of the clashes waged by conventional and Special Operations forces. It documents with precision the failures of American intelligence and the mistakes in administering postwar Iraq.
Unimpeachably sourced, Cobra II describes how the American rush to Baghdad provided the opportunity for the virulent insurgency that followed. The brutal aftermath in Iraq was not inevitable and was a surprise to the generals on both sides; Cobra II provides the first authoritative account as to why. It is a book of enduring importance and incisive analysis-a comprehensive account of the most reported yet least understood war in American history. [via]More editions of Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion And Occupation of Iraq:
A Common Life : The Wedding Storyby Jan KaronISBN 0375431047 (0-375-43104-7)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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The Crazed : A Novelby Ha JinISBN 0375421815 (0-375-42181-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Dark Roomby Rachel SeiffertISBN 0375421041 (0-375-42104-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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David Boringby Daniel ClowesISBN 0375406921 (0-375-40692-1)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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District and Circleby Seamus HeaneyISBN 0374530815 (0-374-53081-5)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Eclipseby John BanvilleISBN 0375411291 (0-375-41129-1)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Elementary Particlesby Michel Houellebecq, Frank WynneISBN 0375407707 (0-375-40770-7)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Elementary Particles'Book summary:Bruno and Michel are half-brothers, born to a hippie mother who believed in following her bliss. As boys they live in ignorance of each other--at one point attending the same school without knowing of their blood connection. As grown men they're not truly close, but they occasionally phone each other late at night. Bruno's a hopeless sexual obsessive, often drunk or on his way there, and Michel's a molecular biologist, distant and inaccessible.
Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles follows these brothers through the latter half of the 20th century. Bruno and Michel are buffeted by history, vessels of disappointment and desire rocked by the ocean of time. Shuttled away to a boarding school where he's sexually abused by other boys, Bruno grows up full of twisted sexual longings and a contempt for aging women so palpable that at times it's stomach-churning. At a commune in the country, Bruno takes stock:
The women were intolerable at breakfast, but by cocktail hour the mystical tarts were hopelessly vying with younger women once again. Death is the great leveler. On Wednesday afternoon he met Catherine, a fifty-year-old who had been a feminist of the old school. She was tanned, with dark curly hair; she must have been very attractive when she was twenty. Her breasts were still in good shape, he thought when he saw her by the pool, but she had a fat ass.
Michel doesn't hate women; he doesn't even notice them. Instead of leering at bodies by the pool, he stares at particles in microscopes. He wins prizes for his experiments, but never experiences the rush of life. For both men, the damage has been done by history, by mother, before the story begins. What interests Houellebecq are the permutations and recapitulations of damage--the way the particles of the self can never be completely reconstituted. --Emily White [via]More editions of The Elementary Particles:
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Embroideriesby Marjane SatrapiISBN 0375423052 (0-375-42305-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Embroideries'Book summary:From the best-selling author of Persepolis comes this gloriously entertaining and enlightening look into the sex lives of Iranian women. Embroideries gathers together Marjanes tough-talking grandmother, stoic mother, glamorous and eccentric aunt and their friends and neighbors for an afternoon of tea drinking and talking. Naturally, the subject turns to love, sex and the vagaries of men.
As the afternoon progresses, these vibrant women share their secrets, their regrets and their often outrageous stories about, among other things, how to fake ones virginity, how to escape an arranged marriage, how to enjoy the miracles of plastic surgery and how to delight in being a mistress. By turns revealing and hilarious, these are stories about the lengths to which some women will go to find a man, keep a man or, most importantly, keep up appearances.
Full of surprises, this introduction to the private lives of some fascinating women, whose life stories and lovers and will strike us as at once deeply familiar and profoundly different from our own, is sure to bring smiles of recognition to the faces of women everywhereand to teach us all a thing or two. [via]More editions of Embroideries:
An End To Suffering: The Buddha In The Worldby Pankaj MishraISBN 0374148368 (0-374-14836-8)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Eventideby Kent HarufISBN 0375411585 (0-375-41158-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Feast of Loveby Charles BaxterISBN 0375410198 (0-375-41019-8)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Field Study: Storiesby Rachel SeiffertISBN 0375422595 (0-375-42259-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Field Study: Stories'Book summary:From the author of the award-winning The Dark Room, here is a strikingly powerful collection of stories that explores with haunting precision themes of guilt, love, and sacrifice. In a variety of settingsfrom the Scottish seaside to postCommunist GermanyRachel Seifferts stories map the terrain of human behavior with a nuance and subtlety that are at once dazzling and unsettling. Powerfully evoking our need for connection, Field Study takes us on journeys that demonstrate both the fragility and adaptability of our emotions, and the vast potential for danger and vulnerability created by all types of love.
In Reach, Dog-Leg Lane, and Tentsmuir Sands, Seiffert explores the dynamic between parents and children, the special knowing that children have but dont always express in ways their parents can understand. In Francis John Jones, 1924 she draws a portrait of an old man recounting an experience as a soldier in World War II that saved his life but left him with deep regrets. In The Late Spring, a man who has led a solitary life begins to accept what he knows will be his solitary death. And in Blue, two teenagers try to come to grips, in conflicting ways, with their first pressing desires for independence. Seiffert isolates and captures not only the underlying and compelling sorrow of love but also the joy and desire for love that keep us alive. [via]More editions of Field Study: Stories:
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From Beirut to Jerusalemby Thomas L. FriedmanISBN 0374158959 (0-374-15895-9)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'From Beirut to Jerusalem'Book summary:This won the 1989 National Book Award. This is an original work. It is a personal piece of scholarship on the intractable problem of Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. This is the book to read on the Middle East. [via]
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The Gateby Francois Bizot, Euan Cameron, John Le CarréISBN 037541293X (0-375-41293-X)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Gate'Book summary:French ethnologist Francois Bizot's The Gate offers a unique insight into the rise of the Khmer Rouge. In 1971 Bizot was studying ancient Buddhist traditions and living with his Khmer partner and daughter in a small village in the environs of the Angkor temple complex. The Khmer Rouge was fighting a guerilla war in rural Cambodia; during a routine visit to a nearby temple, Bizot and his two Khmer colleagues were captured by them and imprisoned deep in the jungle on suspicion of working for the CIA. On trial for his life, over the next three months Bizot developed a strong relationship with his captor, Comrade Douch, who would later become the Khmer Rouge's chief interrogator and commandant of the horrifying Tuol Sleng prison where thousands of captives were tortured prior to execution. The portrait Bizot gives of the young schoolteacher-turned revolutionary and their interaction is simultaneously fascinating and terrifying.
Finally freed after Douch had pleaded his case with the leadership, Bizot became the only Western captive of the Khmer Rouge ever to be released alive, but his story does not end there. On his return to Phnom Penh, due to his fluency in Khmer, he was appointed interpreter between the occupying forces and the remaining western nationals holed up in the French embassy. As the interlocutor at the eponymous gate, he relates with dreadful resignation the moment when the Khmer nationals in the compound were ordered out by the Khmer Rouge forces for "resettlement."
Bizot's is a touching and gripping account of one of the darkest moments in modern history and it is told with a unique voice. As a Cambodian resident, a lover of Cambodia and a fluent Khmer speaker, Bizot shows an understanding of the prevailing mood in the country that other Western commentators have failed to capture effectively, while as a Western academic he is able to see the forces at work and how Cambodia fits into the bigger picture of South East Asian conflict. What emerges is a tale of a land plunged into insanity and Bizot tells it like a eulogy for a dead friend and a confrontation of old demons. The Gate is a stunning book and a must for anyone interested in this grim period of Asian history. --Duncan Thomson [via]
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The Good Women of China : Hidden Voicesby Xinran Xue, Esther TyldesleyISBN 0375422013 (0-375-42201-3)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Good Women of China : Hidden Voices'Book summary:An unprecedented, intimate account of the lives of modern Chinese women, told by the women themselves -- true stories of the political and personal upheavals they have endured in their chaotic and repressive society
For eight groundbreaking years, Xinran hosted a radio program in China during which she invited women to call in and talk about themselves. Broadcast every evening, Words on the Night Breeze became famous throughout the country for its unflinching portrayal of what it meant to be a woman in modern China. Centuries of obedience to their fathers, husbands and sons, followed by years of fear under Communism, had made women terrified of talking openly about their feelings. Xinran won their trust and, through her compassion and ability to listen, became the first woman to hear their true stories.
This unforgettable book is the story of how Xinran negotiated the minefield of restrictions imposed on Chinese journalists to reach out to women across the country. Through the vivid intimacy of her writing, these women confide in the reader, sharing their deepest secrets. Whether they are the privileged wives of party leaders or peasants in a forgotten corner of the countryside, they tell of almost inconceivable suffering: forced marriages, sexual abuse, separation of parents from their children, extreme poverty. But they also talk about love -- about how, despite cruelty, despite politics, the urge to nurture and cherish remains. Their stories changed Xinrans understanding of China forever. Her book will reveal the lives of Chinese women to the West as never before. [via]More editions of The Good Women of China : Hidden Voices:
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Hard Eightby Janet EvanovichISBN 0375431705 (0-375-43170-5)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hard Eight'Book summary:In Hard Eight, Stephanie Plum picks up a case a little nastier than anything the wisecracking bounty hunter's seen before. Evelyn Soder and her young daughter have gone on the run, leaving an angry ex-husband who's planning to collect on a child custody bond that will leave Evelyn's grandmother homeless. Stephanie's first clue that there's more to it than that comes in the form of Eddie Abruzzi, a shady local businessman who warns her to butt out of the case. Stephanie doesn't scare easily, but when Abruzzi's henchmen leave a bag of snakes on her doorknob and tarantulas in her car, she has no choice but to call Ranger, the hunky man of mystery whom she already owes too many favors. Steph knows that Ranger will soon be calling in his marker, but with her ex- fiancé Joe Morelli out of the picture, that should be OK--shouldn't it? In the meantime, she's got other fugitives to catch, aided by the usual band of misfits, plus a bumbling correspondence-school lawyer who's developed the hots for Stephanie's sister, Valerie. And Steph's in for a surprise from her mother, who proves she's not above wielding a dangerous weapon to save her daughter's life.
Author Janet Evanovich has made a bold move in using a soupçon of child jeopardy to pull this series out of the comfortable but formulaic pattern it was threatening to fall into. It's still funny, and yes, some cars are destroyed, but now there's a real edge of darkness under the humor. Fans needn't fear, though: Jersey girl Stephanie is still full of sass and Tastykakes. --Barrie Trinkle [via]
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The Havana Roomby Colin HarrisonISBN 0374299862 (0-374-29986-2)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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The Heart of Rednessby Zakes MdaISBN 0374528349 (0-374-52834-9)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Hillary's Choiceby Gail SheehyISBN 0375408517 (0-375-40851-7)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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How to Be Alone: Essaysby Jonathan FranzenISBN 0374173273 (0-374-17327-3)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How to Be Alone: Essays'Book summary:Jonathan Franzen is smart and brash, the kind of person you want as your social critic but not as a brother-in-law. Many of the 14 essays in How to Be Alone, by the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Corrections, first appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and elsewhere. A long, much-discussed rumination on the American novel, (newly) titled "Why Bother?," is included, as well as essays on privacy obsession, the U.S. post office, New York City, big tobacco, and new prisons. At his best, as in "My Father's Brain," a piece on his father's struggle with Alzheimer's, Franzen can make the ordinary world utterly riveting. But at times, it can be difficult to discern where Franzen stands on any particular subject, as he often takes both sides of an argument. Valid attempts to reflect ambiguity s! ometimes lead to obfuscation, especially in his essays on privacy and tobacco, although his belief that small-town America of years gone by offered the individual little privacy certainly rings true. Franzen can write with panache, as in this comment after he watched, without headphones, a TV show during a flight: "(It) became an exposé of the hydraulics of insincere smiles." A few of the shorter pieces appear to be filler. Franzen shines brightest when he gets edgy and a little angry, as in "The Reader in Exile": "Instead of Manassas battlefield, a historical theme park. Instead of organizing narratives, a map of the world as complex as the world itself. Instead of a soul, membership in a crowd. Instead of wisdom, data." --Mark Frutkin, Amazon.ca [via]
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Human Capitalby Stephen AmidonISBN 0374173508 (0-374-17350-8)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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I Am Charlotte Simmonsby Tom WolfeISBN 0374281580 (0-374-28158-0)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I Am Charlotte Simmons'Book summary:Dupont University--the Olympian halls of learning housing the cream of America's youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with tradition . . . Or so it appears to beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a sheltered freshman from North Carolina. But Charlotte soon learns, to her mounting dismay, that for the uppercrust coeds of Dupont, sex, Cool, and kegs trump academic achievement every time.As Charlotte encounters Dupont's privileged elite--her roommate, Beverly, a Groton-educated Brahmin in lusty pursuit of lacrosse players; Jojo Johanssen, the only white starting player on Dupont's godlike basketball team, whose position is threatened by a hotshot black freshman from the projects; the Young Turk of Saint Ray fraternity, Hoyt Thorpe, whose heady sense of entitlement and social domination is clinched by his accidental brawl with a bodyguard for the governor of California; and Adam Geller, one of the Millennial Mutants who run the university's "independent" newspaper and who consider themselves the last bastion of intellectual endeavor on the sex-crazed, jock-obsessed campus--she gains a new, revelatory sense of her own power, that of her difference and of her very innocence, but little does she realize that she will act as a catalyst in all of their lives.With his signature eye for detail, Tom Wolfe draws on extensive observation of campuses across the country to immortalize college life in the '00s. I Am Charlotte Simmons is the much-anticipated triumph of America's master chronicler. [via]
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In Americaby Susan SontagISBN 0374941149 (0-374-94114-9)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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In the River Sweetby Patricia HenleyISBN 0375421270 (0-375-42127-0)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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In the Shadow of No Towersby Art SpiegelmanISBN 0375423079 (0-375-42307-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In the Shadow of No Towers'Book summary:For Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were both highly personal and intensely political. In the Shadow of No Towers, his first new book of comics since the groundbreaking Maus, is a masterful and moving account of the events and aftermath of that tragic day. Spiegelman and his family bore witness to the attacks in their lower Manhattan neighborhood: his teenage daughter had started school directly below the towers days earlier, and they had lived in the area for years. But the horrors they survived that morning were only the beginning for Spiegelman, as his anguish was quickly displaced by fury at the U.S. government, which shamelessly co-opted the events for its own preconceived agenda. He responded in the way he knows best. In an oversized, two-page-spread format that echoes the scale of the earliest newspaper comics which Spiegelman says brought him solace after the attacks , he relates his experience of the national tragedy in drawings and text that convey-with his singular artistry and his characteristic provocation, outrage, and wit-the unfathomable enormity of the event itself, the obvious and insidious effects it had on his life, and the extraordinary, often hidden changes that have been enacted in the name of post-9/11 national security and that have begun to undermine the very foundation of American democracy. [via]
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Jimmy Corriganby Chris WareISBN 0375404538 (0-375-40453-8)
Hardcover, Schocken Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jimmy Corrigan'Book summary:This first book from Chicago author Chris Ware is a pleasantly-decorated view at a lonely and emotionally-impaired "everyman" (Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth), who is provided, at age 36, the opportunity to meet his father for the first time. An improvisatory romance which gingerly deports itself between 1890's Chicago and 1980's small town Michigan, the reader is helped along by thousands of colored illustrations and diagrams, which, when read rapidly in sequence, provide a convincing illusion of life and movement. The bulk of the work is supported by fold-out instructions, an index, paper cut-outs, and a brief apology, all of which concrete to form a rich portrait of a man stunted by a paralyzing fear of being disliked. [via]
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The Journey Homeby Olafur Johann OlafssonISBN 0375420614 (0-375-42061-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Kalahari Typing School For Menby R. A. McCall SmithISBN 037542217X (0-375-42217-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kalahari Typing School For Men'Book summary:Ex-Library; excellent condition. [via]
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Killing Time : A Novel of the Futureby Caleb CarrISBN 0375430768 (0-375-43076-8)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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The King in the Tree : Three Novellasby Steven MillhauserISBN 0375415408 (0-375-41540-8)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Last Days of Disco, With Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwardby Whit StillmanISBN 0374183392 (0-374-18339-2)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Last Jurorby John GrishamISBN 0375433074 (0-375-43307-4)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Last Juror'Book summary:In 1970, small town newspaper The Clanton Times went belly up. With financial assistance from a rich relative, it's purchased by 23-year-old Willie Traynor, formerly the paper's cub reporter. Soon afterward, his new business receives the readership boost it needs thanks to his editorial efforts and coverage of a particularly brutal rape and murder committed by the scion of the town's reclusive bootlegger family. Rather than shy from reporting on the subsequent open-and-shut trial (those who oppose the Padgitt family tend to turn up dead in the area's swampland), Traynor launches a crusade to ensure the unrepentant murderer is brought to justice. When a guilty verdict is returned, the town is relieved to find the Padgitt family's grip on the town did not sway the jury, though Danny Padgitt is sentenced to life in prison rather than death. But, when Padgitt is released after serving less than a decade in jail and members of the jury are murdered, Clanton once again finds itself at the mercy of its renegade family.
When it comes, the dénouement is no surprise; The Last Juror is less a story of suspense than a study of the often idyllic southern town of Clanton, Mississippi (the setting for Grisham's first novel, A Time to Kill). Throughout the nine years between Padgitt's trial and release, Traynor finds acceptance in Clanton, where the people "don't really trust you unless they trusted your grandfather." He grows from a long-haired idealist into another of the town's colorful characters--renovating an old house, sporting a bowtie, beloved on both sides of the color line, and the only person to have attended each of the town's 88 churches at least once. The Last Juror returns Grisham to the courtroom where he made his name, but those who enjoyed the warm sentiment of his recent novels (Bleachers, A Painted House) will still find much to love here. --Benjamin Reese [via]
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The Light of Dayby Graham SwiftISBN 0375415491 (0-375-41549-1)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Little Womenby Katharine WeberISBN 0374189595 (0-374-18959-5)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11by Thomas L. FriedmanISBN 0374190666 (0-374-19066-6)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11'Book summary:America's leading observer of the international scene on the minute-by-minute events of September 11th--before, during and after As the Foreign Affairs columnist for the The New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman is in a unique position to interpret the world for American readers. Twice a week, Friedman's celebrated commentary provides the most trenchant, pithy,and illuminating perspective in journalism.Longitudes and Attitudes contains the columns Friedman has published about the most momentous news story of our time, as well as a diary of his experiences and reactions during this period of crisis. As the author writes, the book is "not meant to be a comprehensive study of September 11 and all the factors that went into it. Rather, my hope is that it will constitute a 'word album' that captures and preserves the raw, unpolished, emotional and analytical responses that illustrate how I, and others, felt as we tried to grapple with September and its aftermath, as they were unfolding."Readers have repeatedly said that Friedman has expressed the essence of their own feelings, helping them not only by explaining who "they" are, but also by reassuring us about who "we" are. More than any other journalist writing, Friedman gives voice to America's awakening sense of its role in a changed world. [via]
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Loot And Other Storiesby Nadine GordimerISBN 0374190909 (0-374-19090-9)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Lunar Parkby Bret Easton EllisISBN 0375412913 (0-375-41291-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lunar Park'Book summary:
Book Description:
Imagine becoming a bestselling novelist, and almost immediately famous and wealthy, while still in college, and before long seeing your insufferable father reduced to a bag of ashes in a safety-deposit box, while after American Psycho your celebrity drowns in a sea of vilification, booze, and drugs.Then imagine having a second chance ten years later, as the Bret Easton Ellis of this remarkable novel is given, with a wife, children, and suburban sobriety--only to watch this new life shatter beyond recognition in a matter of days. At a fateful Halloween party he glimpses a disturbing (fictional) character driving a car identical to his late father's, his stepdaughter's doll violently "malfunctions," and their house undergoes bizarre transformations both within and without. Connecting these aberrations to graver events--a series of grotesque murders that no longer seem random and the epidemic disappearance of boys his sons age--Ellis struggles to defend his family against this escalating menace even as his wife, their therapists, and the police insist that his apprehensions are rooted instead in substance abuse and egomania.
Lunar Park confounds one expectation after another, passing through comedy and mounting horror, both psychological and supernatural, toward an astonishing resolution--about love and loss, fathers and sons--in what is surely the most powerfully original and deeply moving novel of an extraordinary career.
A Tale of Two Brets: An Amazon.com Interview with Bret Easton Ellis
In his novel Lunar Park, Bret Easton Ellis takes first-person narrative to an extreme, inserting himself (and a host of real characters from the publishing world) into the haunting story of a drugged-out famous writer living in the suburbs trying to reconnect with his wife and son and reconcile his damaged past. Ellis is at the top of his game in Lunar Park, his first novel since 1999's Glamorama, delivering a disturbing and delirious novel about celebrity, writers, and fathers and sons (not to mention a cameo from notorious Ellis creation, Patrick Bateman). Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons spoke with Ellis in a Seattle to Los Angeles phone call to talk about the fact and fiction behind Lunar Park, New York versus LA, '80s music, and the whole "American Psycho thing."
Read the Amazon.com interview with Bret Easton EllisLess Than Zero (1985)
Published when Ellis was a junior at Bennington, Less Than Zero is the mesmerizing first-person chronicle of Clay, our laconic, zoned-out guide to a subculture of over-privileged nihilism in early '80s Los Angeles. He travels back home from Camden College (a thinly veiled Bennington) for Christmas break and re-enters his circle of jaded friends--including his ex-girlfriend Blair, and his best friend Julian, who's now hustling to support his drug habit--and a parade of Porches, late-night parties, cocaine, and casual destruction.Ellis on Ellis: "I don't think it's a perfect book by any means, but it's valid. I get where it comes from. I get what it is. There's a lot of it that I wish was slightly more elegantly written. Overall, I was pretty shocked. It was pretty good writing for someone who was 19."
The Rules of Attraction (1987)
A line-up of Camden College students share the narrating duties in The Rules of Attraction, Ellis' sex-fueled, drug-baked second novel. There's Lauren (who's in the midst of losing her virginity as the book opens), who longs for her boyfriend Victor, currently traveling through Europe; Lauren's ex, Paul, a bisexual party boy who hooks up with hard-drinking closet-case Sean (surname Bateman--that's right, younger brother of Patrick), who also has the hots for Lauren. Less than Zero's Clay makes a cameo appearance as well as a passing glimpse of Ellis' Bennington classmate Donna Tartt's murderous Classics majors from The Secret History. Ellis on Ellis: "It might be my favorite book of mine. I was writing that book while I was at college. Sort of like the best of times, the worst of times. There was a lot of elation, there was a lot of despair. It was just a really fun book to write. I loved mimicking all the different voices. The stream of conscious does get a little out of hand. I kind of like that about the book. It's kind of all over the place. It's casual. It's scruffy. That's the one book of mine that I have a very, very soft spot for."
American Psycho (1991)
Shopaholic sociopath Patrick Bateman's killer grip drags readers into a bloody, brand-name, urban nightmare as the 26-year-old Wall Street yuppie executes his grooming habits and eviscerates strangers with equal élan. Simon & Schuster dropped the too-hot-to-handle American Psycho which was then published as a paperback original by Vintage Books. Ellis received death threats while the book was boycotted, sliced up by reviewers, and went on to become a bestseller. Mary Harron's 2000 film version starred then little-known British actor Christian Bale, who would later suit up as the Dark Knight in 2005's Batman Begins. Ellis on Ellis: "It was good. It was fun. It was not nearly as pretentious as I remember I wanted it to be when I was writing it. I found it really fast-moving. I found it really funny. And I liked it a lot. The violence was... it made my toes curl. I really freaked out. I couldn't believe how violent it was. It was truly upsetting. I had to steel myself to re-read those passages."
The Informers (1994)
Ellis returns to early '80s Los Angeles ennui with The Informers, a loosely connected collection of stories of the bored, rich, and morally depraved, written around the same time as Less than Zero. Sex, drugs, and gratuitous violence take center stage, with characters including an aging, predatory anchorwoman, a debauched rock star tearing through Japan, and a pick-up artist vampire. While some of the vignettes echo better Ellis works, ultimately the stories don't add to much as a whole. Book critics are less than receptive to Ellis' post-American Psycho offering. Ellis on Ellis: "Those were written while I was at Bennington. I wrote a lot of short stories between 1981 or 1982 or so... The Informers more or less kind of represented probably the best of those stories. I wrote a lot of really bad ones, but those are the ones that worked the best together."
Glamorama (1999)
Actor-model Victor Ward (who first made an appearance in the Ellis oeuvre in The Rules of Attraction) is the narrator of Glamorama, Ellis longest novel yet. Ellis offers bold-faced names and celebrity skewering in the first half of the book as Victor tries to open a Manhattan club while cheating on his supermodel girlfriend and double-crossing his partner, but the second half takes a violent, paranoid turn as Victor is sent to England and unwittingly lured into a sadistic ring of international terrorists (posing as supermodels) leaving a bloody trail across the globe. Ellis on Ellis: "[T]he book wasn't necessarily about terrorism to me. It was about a whole bunch of other stuff. It's definitely the book that I can tell--I don't know if other people can tell but I can tell as a writer--is probably the most divisive that I've written. It has an equal number of detractors as it does fans. It doesn't really hold true with the other books. It was the one that took the longest to write, and the one that seemed the most important at the time. It's an unwieldy book... I like it."
Ellis on DVD
Less Than Zero
American Psycho
The Rules of AttractionWill the Real Bret Easton Ellis Please Stand Up?
Visit the author's Web site at www.2brets.com.
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Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Futureby Jennifer Baumgardner, Amy RichardsISBN 0374526222 (0-374-52622-2)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future'Book summary:A powerful indictment from within of the current state of feminism, and a passionate call to armsFrom Lilith Fair to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the WNBA--everywhere you look, girl culture is clearly ascendant. Young women live by feminism's goals, yet feminism itself is undeniably at a crossroads; "girl power" feminists appear to be obsessed with personal empowerment at the expense of politics while political institutions such as Ms. and NOW are so battle weary they've lost their ability to speak to a new generation. In Manifesta, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards show the snags in each feminist hub--from the dissolution of riot grrrls into the likes of the Spice Girls, to older women's hawking of young girls' imperiled self-esteem, to the hyped hatred of feminist thorns like Katie Roiphe and Naomi Wolf--and prove that these snags have not, in fact, torn feminism asunder. In an intelligent and incendiary argument, Baumgardner and Richards address issues instead of feelings and the political as well as the personal. They describe the seven deadly sins the media commits against feminism, provide keys to accessible and urgent activism, discuss why the ERA is still a relevant and crucial political goal, and spell out what a world with equality would look like. They apply Third Wave confidence to Second Wave consciousness, all the while maintaining that the answer to feminism's problems is still feminism. [via]
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Memoirs of a Geishaby Arthur GoldenISBN 0375400117 (0-375-40011-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Memoirs of a Geisha'Book summary:According to Arthur Golden's absorbing first novel, the word "geisha" does not mean "prostitute," as Westerners ignorantly assume--it means "artisan" or "artist." To capture the geisha experience in the art of fiction, Golden trained as long and hard as any geisha who must master the arts of music, dance, clever conversation, crafty battle with rival beauties, and cunning seduction of wealthy patrons. After earning degrees in Japanese art and history from Harvard and Columbia--and an M.A. in English--he met a man in Tokyo who was the illegitimate offspring of a renowned businessman and a geisha. This meeting inspired Golden to spend 10 years researching every detail of geisha culture, chiefly relying on the geisha Mineko Iwasaki, who spent years charming the very rich and famous.
The result is a novel with the broad social canvas (and love of coincidence) of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen's intense attention to the nuances of erotic maneuvering. Readers experience the entire life of a geisha, from her origins as an orphaned fishing-village girl in 1929 to her triumphant auction of her mizuage (virginity) for a record price as a teenager to her reminiscent old age as the distinguished mistress of the powerful patron of her dreams. We discover that a geisha is more analogous to a Western "trophy wife" than to a prostitute--and, as in Austen, flat-out prostitution and early death is a woman's alternative to the repressive, arcane system of courtship. In simple, elegant prose, Golden puts us right in the tearoom with the geisha; we are there as she gracefully fights for her life in a social situation where careers are made or destroyed by a witticism, a too-revealing (or not revealing enough) glimpse of flesh under the kimono, or a vicious rumor spread by a rival "as cruel as a spider."
Golden's web is finely woven, but his book has a serious flaw: the geisha's true romance rings hollow--the love of her life is a symbol, not a character. Her villainous geisha nemesis is sharply drawn, but she would be more so if we got a deeper peek into the cause of her motiveless malignity--the plight all geisha share. Still, Golden has won the triple crown of fiction: he has created a plausible female protagonist in a vivid, now-vanished world, and he gloriously captures Japanese culture by expressing his thoughts in authentic Eastern metaphors. [via]
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Mr Golightly's Holidayby Salley VickersISBN 0374214891 (0-374-21489-1)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mr Golightly's Holiday'Book summary:1. holiday: a period in which a break is taken from work or studies for rest, travel, or recreation. [literally: holy day][via]
Many years ago, Mr. Golightly wrote a work of dramatic fiction that grew to be an astonishing international bestseller. But his reputation is on the decline and he finds himself badly out of touch with the modern world. He decides to take a holiday and comes to the historic village of Great Calne, hoping to use the opportunity to bring his great work up to date. But he soon finds that events take over his plans and that the themes he has written on are being strangely replicated in the lives of the villagers around him.
As he comes to know his neighbors better, Mr. Golightly begins to examine his attitude toward love and to ponder the terrible catastrophe of his only son's death. And we begin to learn the true, and extraordinary, identity of Mr. Golightly and the nature of the secret sorrow that haunts him and links him to his new friends.
Mysterious, light of touch, witty, and profound, Mr Golightly's Holiday confirms Salley Vickers's reputation as a writer of "fiction that entertains even as it considers serious questions of sin and redemption, love and loss" (Francine Prose, People).More editions of Mr Golightly's Holiday:
Mrs. Sartorisby Elke Schmitter, Carol Brown JanewayISBN 0375411860 (0-375-41186-0)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Mulberry Empireby Philip HensherISBN 0375414886 (0-375-41488-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Natasha: And Other Storiesby David BezmozgisISBN 0374281416 (0-374-28141-6)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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New Addresses: Poemsby Kenneth KochISBN 0375410279 (0-375-41027-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Nightby Elie Wiesel, Marion WieselISBN 0374500010 (0-374-50001-0)
Softcover, Hill & Wang Pub
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Night'Book summary:A New Translation From The French By Marion Wiesel[via]
Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.
Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.
The Nimrod Flipoutby Etgar Keret, Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra SilverstonISBN 0374222436 (0-374-22243-6)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agencyby R. A. McCall SmithISBN 0375423877 (0-375-42387-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency'Book summary:Penzler Pick, July 2001: Working in a mystery tradition that will cause genre aficionados to think of such classic sleuths as Melville Davisson Post's Uncle Abner or Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee, Alexander McCall Smith creates an African detective, Precious Ramotswe, who's their full-fledged heir.
It's the detective as folk hero, solving crimes through an innate, self-possessed wisdom that, combined with an understanding of human nature, invariably penetrates into the heart of a puzzle. If Miss Marple were fat and jolly and lived in Botswana--and decided to go against any conventional notion of what an unmarried woman should do, spending the money she got from selling her late father's cattle to set up a Ladies' Detective Agency--then you have an idea of how Precious sets herself up as her country's first female detective. Once the clients start showing up on her doorstep, Precious enjoys a pleasingly successful series of cases.
But the edge of the Kalahari is not St. Mary Mead, and the sign Precious orders, painted in brilliant colors, is anything but discreet. Pointing in the direction of the small building she had purchased to house her new business, it reads "THE NO. 1 LADIES DETECTIVE AGENCY. FOR ALL CONFIDENTIAL MATTERS AND ENQUIRIES. SATISFACTION GUARANTEED FOR ALL PARTIES. UNDER PERSONAL MANAGEMENT."
The solutions she comes up with, whether in the case of the clinic doctor with two quite different personalities (depending on the day of the week), or the man who had joined a Christian sect and seemingly vanished, or the kidnapped boy whose bones may or may not be those in a witch doctor's magic kit, are all sensible, logical, and satisfying. Smith's gently ironic tone is full of good humor towards his lively, intelligent heroine and towards her fellow Africans, who live their lives with dignity and with cautious acceptance of the confusions to which the world submits them. Precious Ramotswe is a remarkable creation, and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency well deserves the praise it received from London's Times Literary Supplement. I look forward with great eagerness to the upcoming books featuring the memorable Miss Ramotswe, Tears of the Giraffe and Morality for Beautiful Girls, soon to be available in the U.S. --Otto Penzler [via]
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Off Keck Roadby Mona SimpsonISBN 0375410104 (0-375-41010-4)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Off Keck Road'Book summary:In Off Keck Road, Mona Simpson, celebrated author of Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father and A Regular Guy, has written a novel about life's left-behinds. Her characters are people no one really wants, and Keck Road, in a dingy Wisconsin suburb, is a place where no one wants to live. Simpson's story follows tender-hearted Bea Maxwell, daughter of one of Green Bay's leading families, as she befriends first one, then another of the road's residents. Bea herself hails from a fancier part of town, where as a teenager in the 1950s she is busy and happy and not quite like everyone else:
It was as if adolescence--that new word that everyone all of a sudden knew--was a contagion Bea somehow had not caught. She agreed with her reasonable parents that dieting yourself half to death was dangerous. She found high heels ridiculous. She ate casseroles and desserts with the abandon of a 10-year-old boy.
Bea never does pair up with anyone, boy or man, and her virginity, as imagined by Simpson, is a lifelong, defining condition: it "seemed an erectness in her posture, something symmetrical, silver".Bea compensates for her lack of love by weaving a tight web of equally not-quite-the-thing friends: Bill, the divorced boss at the real estate agency where she works; June, a single mom; Matthew, a priest; and finally, Shelley, uneducated, clever, a polio survivor. A dual portrait emerges: Simpson shows us a gossipy, exclusionary Midwestern town. And she shows us, in full, Bea, a character who teeters between the conventional (golfer, broker of the year, board member at the church) and the off-beat. The author never forces Bea into the unlikely role of heroine, nor does she judge her curious circle of friends. In the end, Simpson's warts-and-all rendering has a real humanity to it. --Claire Dederer, Amazon.com [via]
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On The Wing: To The Edge Of The Earth With The Peregrine Falconby Alan TennantISBN 0375415513 (0-375-41551-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Our Lady of the Forestby David GutersonISBN 0375412115 (0-375-41211-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Our Lady of the Forest'Book summary:David Guterson's Our Lady of the Forest navigates between the mystical and the cynical in its slowly paced telling of a Marian encounter in North Fork, Washington. The story opens in the North Fork campground among homeless mushroom pickers. The town is reeling from the loss of its logging industry, and its residents make their way by scavenging odd jobs and selling the produce of the forest. Living in the campground, 16-year-old Anne Holmes is a runaway asthmatic whose recent interest in Catholicism follows a period of petty thievery, drug use, and frequent masturbation (an interest that Guterson notes is shared by the town priest, Father Don Collins). While off on her rounds of mushrooming one morning, she encounters a bright light--the Virgin Mary, she believes. Soon, she has drawn a band of thousands as people flock to North Fork to witness the vision and be healed. But, through Carolyn Greer, a world-weary fellow-mushroom-picker who longs for nothing more than an extended vacation to "Cabo"-- readers learn that Anne actually sees nothing, or at least no one else shares the Marian apparition that gives Anne lofty commands each day.
At times Guterson lets his characters' pettiness, opportunism, and cynicism overrun the delicacy of Anne's world. Carolyn's vehement atheism and materialistic languor undermine what could have been a stronger counter-point to her spiritual friend. Even Father Collins, who struggles between fatherly compassion and sexual longing for the young visionary, is too full of self-loathing for readers to embrace him. Yet, the novel's exploration of Anne's abrupt and intense faith pierces the narrative and brings light to it. And as Anne's visions grow in intensity and her health begins to fail, one can't help but long for divine intervention on her behalf. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]
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The Piano Tunerby Daniel MasonISBN 0375414657 (0-375-41465-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Piano Tuner'Book summary:Daniel Mason's debut novel, The Piano Tuner, is the mesmerizing story of Edgar Drake, commissioned by the British War Office in 1886 to travel to hostile Burma to repair a rare Erard grand piano vital to the Crown's strategic interests. Eccentric Surgeon-Major Anthony Carroll has brokered peace with local warlords primarily through music, a free medical clinic, and the "powers" of common scientific instruments, much to the dismay of warmongering officers suspect of such unorthodox methods. Drake is an introspective, well-mannered soul who, once there, falls in love with Burma and stays long past the piano-fixing to aid Carroll's political agenda. Drake's arduous journey to reach the outpost, however, takes far too long (nearly half the book) and the plotting is rather heavy-handed at times (one night, Drake learns of a mysterious "Man with One Story" who rarely speaks, and the very next morning the Man tells all to Drake). The story is ambitious, the language florid and sure to please, but the dialogue and melodrama are sometimes tedious. While out on the town with Carroll's love interest, Khin Myo (who enchants Drake), Mason offers the townspersons' view of Drake:
It is only natural that a guest be treated with hospitality, the quiet man who has come to mend the singing elephant is shy, and walks with the posture of one who is unsure of the world, we too would keep him company to make him feel welcome, but we do not speak English.... They say he is one of the kind of men who has dreams, but tells no one.
Drake's complexity is thin; perhaps the beauty of Burma takes over any real need for introspection. Despite these quibbles, The Piano Tuner is a memorable achievement. --Michael Ferch [via]More editions of The Piano Tuner:
Pickupby Nadine GordimerISBN 0374232105 (0-374-23210-5)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists: A Novelby Gideon DefoeISBN 0375423214 (0-375-42321-4)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Platformby Michel Houellebecq, Frank WynneISBN 0375414622 (0-375-41462-2)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Platform'Book summary:Michel Renault is a human void. Following the death of the father he barely knew, he endures his civil ser-
vice job while eking out an existence of prepackaged pleasure, hollow friendships, TV dinners, and pornography. On a group holiday in Thailand, however, he meets the shyly compelling Valérie, who soon pursues an agenda that Michel himself could never have thought possible: his own humanization.
Back in Paris, they plunge into an affair that strays into S&M, public sex, and partner swapping, even as they devise a scheme to save Valéries ailing travel company by capitalizing on the only trade Michel has seen flourish in the Third World. Before long, he quits his job, and their business model for sex tourism is gradually implemented. But when they return to Thailand, where Michels philosophy will be put into practice, he discovers that sex is neither the most consuming nor dangerous of passions . . .
From a suburbanized West crippled by hate crime to an East subsumed by materialism, Michel Houellebecq exploreswith characteristic provocativeness, but also with surprising tendernessthe emotions that seem most resilient to any influence: love and hate. Platform is, as Anita Brookner has written, a brilliant novel, casting a prescient eye on the abuses and inequalities that lead to wider trouble. [via]More editions of Platform:
Plum Lovin'by Janet EvanovichISBN 0375432043 (0-375-43204-3)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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Purple Cane Roadby James Lee BurkeISBN 0375430555 (0-375-43055-5)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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The Racketsby Thomas KellyISBN 0374177201 (0-374-17720-1)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Readerby Bernhard Schlink, Carol Brown JanewayISBN 0375408266 (0-375-40826-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Reader'Book summary:Oprah Book Club® Selection, February 1999: Originally published in Switzerland, and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her, and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past, and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? "We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable.... Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?"
The Reader, which won the Boston Book Review's Fisk Fiction Prize, wrestles with many more demons in its few, remarkably lucid pages. What does it mean to love those people--parents, grandparents, even lovers--who committed the worst atrocities the world has ever known? And is any atonement possible through literature? Schlink's prose is clean and pared down, stripped of unnecessary imagery, dialogue, and excess in any form. What remains is an austerely beautiful narrative of the attempt to breach the gap between Germany's pre- and postwar generations, between the guilty and the innocent, and between words and silence. --R. Ellis [via]
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Red Dogby Louis De BernieresISBN 0375421556 (0-375-42155-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Red Dog'Book summary:In 1998, Louis de Bernieresacclaimed author of Corellis Mandolincame upon a bronze statue in a town on Australias northwestern coast and was immediately compelled to know more about Red Dog. He did not have to go far: everyone for hundreds of miles in every direction seemed to have a story about Red Dog. He was a Red Cloud Kelpie, a breed of sheepdog known for its energy and cleverness. But Red Dog was a kind of ultra-Kelpie, energetic and clever enough for an entire breed in himself.
Dubbed a professional traveler rather than a stray, Red Dog established his own transportation system, hitchhiking between far-flung towns and female dogs in cars whose engine noises hed memorized and whose drivers hed charmed. The call of the wild was matched by the call of the supper dish; Red Dogs appetite was as legendary as his exploits. Everyone wanted to adopt him (one group of workers made him a member of their union), but Red Dog would be adopted byor, more precisely, he would adoptonly one man: a bus driver whose love life quickly began to suffer and who never quite recovered from Red Dogs relentlessly affectionate presence.
Independent, clever, sly, stubborn, courageous and foolhardy, impatient with boredom and the boring, Red Dog endeared himself to (almost) everyone who crossed his path. These funny, surprising, and touching stories of his life are certain to endear him to every reader. [via]More editions of Red Dog:
Reunionby Alan P. LightmanISBN 037542167X (0-375-42167-X)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Reversible Errorsby Scott TurowISBN 0374281602 (0-374-28160-2)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Samaritanby Richard PriceISBN 0375411151 (0-375-41115-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Seek My Faceby John UpdikeISBN 0375414908 (0-375-41490-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Shroudby John BanvilleISBN 0375411305 (0-375-41130-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Skinny Dipby Carl HiaasenISBN 0375411089 (0-375-41108-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Snow Mountain Passageby James D. HoustonISBN 0375411038 (0-375-41103-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Status Anxietyby Alain de BottonISBN 0375420835 (0-375-42083-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Status Anxiety'Book summary:Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The firstthe story of our quest for sexual loveis well known and well charted. . . . The secondthe story of our quest for love from the worldis a more secret and shameful tale. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first.
This is a book about an almost universal anxiety that rarely gets mentioned directly: an anxiety about what others think of us, about whether were judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser. This is a book about status anxiety.
Alain de Botton, best-selling author of The Consolations of Philosophy and The Art of Travel, askswith lucidity and charmwhere our worries about status come from and what, if anything, we can do to surmount them. With the help of philosophers, artists and writers, he examines the origins of status anxiety (ranging from the consequences of the French Revolution to our secret dismay at the success of our friends) before revealing ingenious ways in which people have been able to overcome their worries in the search for happiness. We learn about sandal-less philosophers and topless bohemians, about the benefits of putting skulls on our sideboards, and about looking at ancient ruins.
The result is a book that isnt just highly entertaining and thought-provoking, but that is genuinely wise and helpful, too. [via]More editions of Status Anxiety:
The Stories of Mary Gordonby Mary GordonISBN 0375423168 (0-375-42316-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Stories of Mary Gordon'Book summary:The masterly stories of Mary Gordon return us to the pleasure of this writers craft and to her monumental talent as an observer of character and of the ever-fading American Dream. These pieces encompass the pre- and postwar Irish American family life she circles in the early Temporary Shelter series, as well as a wealth of new fiction that brings her contemporary characters into middle age; it is their turn to face bodily decline, mortality, and the more complex anxieties of modern life. Gordon captures the sharp scent of feelings as they shift, the shape of particular lives in their hope and incomprehensibility.
In The Neighborhood, a seven-year-old who has lost her father finds birthday parties, with their noisy games and spun-sugar roses on fancy cakes, her greatest trial. City Life explores the dark side of Manhattan apartment living. Intertextuality proposes a dream meeting between Prousts characters and the authors aging grandmother. Throughout, Gordons surprising path to the center of a story is as much a part of the tale as the self-understanding her characters achieve in the process: What were they all, any of them, feeling? one narrator ventures. This was the sort of question no one in my family would ask. Feelings were for others: the weak, the idle. We were people who got on with things.
With their powerful insights into how we make do, both socially and privately, these stories are a treasure of American fiction. Each is a joy to read and a chance to savor Gordons clear vision: her ability to reveal at every turn what we need and what we wish for, and her willingness, always, to address what comes of such precious wishes. [via]More editions of The Stories of Mary Gordon:
The Strength of Poetry: Oxford Lecturesby James FentonISBN 0374528489 (0-374-52848-9)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Strength of Poetry: Oxford Lectures'Book summary:Sharp-eyed critiques and appreciations of the essential poets of our time.
James Fenton is unique among contemporary writers in having achieved equal distinction as a poet and -- in his reportage and criticism -- as a master of trenchant prose. What is more, he has shown himself a devoted critic of both American and British modern poetry, an explainer of each tradition to the other and to itself. In these lectures, delivered at Oxford (where he succeeded Seamus Heaney as Professor of Poetry from 1994 to 1999), Fenton moves easily from Philip Larkin's laments for the British Empire, to Heaney's uneasy rebellion against it, to Robert Frost's celebrations of American conquest; from W. H. Auden on Shakespeare's homoeroticism to the vexed "feminism" of Elizabeth Bishop; from Wilfred Owen's juvenilia to Marianne Moore's youthful agitation for women's suffrage.
In these lectures -- many of which appeared in The New York Review of Books -- Fenton makes sense of the last century in poetry, and explores its antecedents and its legacies, with the lucidity, wit, and gusto that have made his criticism famous. [via]
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The Summonsby John GrishamISBN 0375431977 (0-375-43197-7)
Softcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Summons'Book summary:An intelligent, low-key thriller, The Summons continues John Grisham's exploration of the common decencies of a strain of American commercial story-telling in literature and film that we often link to the work of Frank Capra or O Henry. He is not afraid of parable or of setting up situations that are at once archetypal and attractively specific. This is a tale of two brothers--one is righteous, more or less, and one is not--and a question of their inheritance. Ancient Mississippi judge Atlee summons his two sons to his deathbed, but dies before he can explain himself, leaving Ray, who arrives on time unlike his drunkard brother Forest with the difficult problem of the three million dollars in used notes which are lying around the house in shoe-boxes. Ray worries about his father's posthumous reputation, about the Inland Revenue Service and about how quickly Forrest could drink himself to death with unlimited funds.
Grisham is very acute indeed on how the best of intentions lead Ray not to any significant crime or atrocity but to quietly unconscionable behaviour. And then he realises he is being followed... Grisham can build suspense out of remarkably little and has a real gift for understanding the quiet anxieties of an ordinary man. --Roz Kaveney [via]
Super Dooper Jezebelby Tony RossISBN 0374336601 (0-374-33660-1)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Thirteen Moonsby Charles FrazierISBN 0375431896 (0-375-43189-6)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Thirteen Moons'Book summary:This magnificent novel by one of Americas finest writers is the epic of one mans remarkable journey, set in nineteenth-century America against the background of a vanishing people and a rich way of life.
At the age of twelve, under the Wind moon, Will is given a horse, a key, and a map, and sent alone into the Indian Nation to run a trading post as a bound boy. It is during this time that he grows into a man, learning, as he does, of the raw power it takes to create a life, to find a home. In a card game with a white Indian named Featherstone, Will wins for a brief moment a mysterious girl named Claire, and his passion and desire for her spans this novel. As Wills destiny intertwines with the fate of the Cherokee Indians including a Cherokee Chief named Bear he learns how to fight and survive in the face of both nature and men, and eventually, under the Corn Tassel Moon, Will begins the fight against Washington City to preserve the Cherokees homeland and culture. And he will come to know the truth behind his belief that only desire trumps time.
Brilliantly imagined, written with great power and beauty by a master of American fiction, Thirteen Moons is a stunning novel about a mans passion for a woman, and how loss, longing and love can shape a mans destiny over the many moons of a life. [via]More editions of Thirteen Moons:
To the Ninesby Janet EvanovichISBN 0375432027 (0-375-43202-7)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'To the Nines'Book summary:The #1 New York Times Bestselling AuthorA Stephanie Plum NovelJanet Evanovich's novels are the hottest bestsellers in America!# 1 New York Times# 1 Wall Street Journal#1 Los Angeles Times#1 Entertainment Weekly#1 Publishers WeeklyStephanie Plum's got rent to pay, people shooting at her, and psychos wanting her dead every day of the week (much to the dismay of her mother, her family, the men in her life, the guy who slices meat at the deli . . . oh, the list goes on). An ordinary person would cave under the pressure.But hey, she's from Jersey.Stephanie Plum may not be the best bounty hunter in beautiful downtown Trenton, but she's pretty darn good at turning bad situations her way . . . and she always gets her man. In To the Nines, her cousin Vinnie (who's also her boss) has posted bail on Samuel Singh, an illegal immigrant. When the elusive Mr. Singh goes missing, Stephanie is on the case. But what she uncovers is far more sinister than anyone imagines and leads to a group of killers who give new meaning to the word hunter.In a race against time that takes her from the Jersey Turnpike to the Vegas Strip, Stephanie Plum is on the chase of her life. The unforgettable characters, nonstop action, high-stakes suspense, and sheer entertainment of To the Nines define Janet Evanovich as unique among today's writers.[via]More editions of To the Nines:
A Traitor to Memoryby Elizabeth GeorgeISBN 0375431136 (0-375-43113-6)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Traitor to Memory'Book summary:Families can be monstrous and their secrets dangerous, as New Scotland Yard detectives Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers have discovered. The pair are puzzled that the Hampstead police need their help investigating the vehicular murder of a middle-aged divorcée, until they find evidence that one of their own superiors once knew the dead lady very well indeed. But the circumstances of Eugenie Davies's murder appear to center on her children: Gideon, a famous violinist now undergoing psychoanalysis for his sudden inability to play, and the long-dead Sonia, a disabled baby whose drowning death was shrouded in secrecy for her virtuoso brother's sake--at the insistence of their father, Richard--but also trumpeted in the press as the infamous "nanny murder" of its day. The nanny, Katja Wolff, has recently been released from prison, having never spoken of the night Sonia drowned. Lynley, Havers, and their colleague Winston Nkata know that whatever secret Katja Wolff has been hiding must be the cause of Eugenie Davies's death, but before they can find out what it is, another deliberate hit-and-run occurs in their own backyard.
The suspects are many: Wolff; Eugenie's most recent suitor; her ne'er-do-well brother; Gideon's longtime mentor, who kept in contact with Eugenie in the years after she abandoned her husband and son; and a gentleman of many monikers who boarded with the family at the time of the drowning. Even Richard Davies, the dead woman's ex-husband, is under suspicion. But it's violinist Gideon Davies's quest into his family's past, undertaken to save his career, that sets the book's events in motion. His own telling of the story runs parallel to the author's own voice but is time-shifted. Along with the details of the police investigation, this paints a disturbing picture of what happens when the truth is obscured and a child's normal instincts sublimated.
A Traitor to Memory is massive, and it's hard not to spot a few flaws in a plot so complex. The dual narratives force abnormally slow reading, the motive for one murder and two near-murders is inexplicably glossed over, and many doughty Lynley/Havers fans will still wonder by the end what exactly happened in Sonia's bathroom. Yet Elizabeth George orchestrates the family-secrets theme like a maestro, and at least one of the second-chair players--such as Katja Wolff's beautiful, scarred lover Yasmine Edwards--may be a rising star in the series. George's fans will no doubt find this 11th entry in the series worthy of a standing ovation. --Barrie Trinkle [via]
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Triangleby Katharine WeberISBN 0374281424 (0-374-28142-4)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Triangle'Book summary:Esther Gottesfeld is the last living survivor of the notorious 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire and has told her story countless times in the span of her lifetime. Even so, her death at the age of 106 leaves unanswered many questions about what happened that fateful day. How did she manage to survive the fire when at least 146 workers, most of them women, her sister and fiancé among them, burned or jumped to their deaths from the sweatshop inferno? Are the discrepancies in her various accounts over the years just ordinary human fallacy, or is there a hidden story in Esther's recollections of that terrible day? Esther's granddaughter Rebecca Gottesfeld, with her partner George Botkin, an ingenious composer, seek to unravel the facts of the matter while Ruth Zion, a zealous feminist historian of the fire, bores in on them with her own mole-like agenda. A brilliant, haunting novel about one of the most terrible tragedies in early-twentieth-century America, Triangle forces us to consider how we tell our stories, how we hear them, and how history is forged from unverifiable truths. [via]
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True History of the Kelly Gangby Peter CareyISBN 0375410848 (0-375-41084-8)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'True History of the Kelly Gang'Book summary:Out of nineteenth-century Australia rides a hero of his people and a man for all nations, in this masterpiece by the Booker Prize-winning author of Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs. Exhilarating, hilarious, panoramic, and immediately engrossing, it is also-at a distance of many thousand miles and more than a century-a Great American Novel.This is Ned Kelly's true confession, in his own words and written on the run for an infant daughter he has never seen. To the authorities, this son of dirt-poor Irish immigrants was a born thief and, ultimately, a cold-blooded murderer; to most other Australians, he was a scapegoat and patriot persecuted by "English" landlords and their agents.With his brothers and two friends, Kelly eluded a massive police manhunt for twenty months, living by his wits and strong heart, supplementing his bushwhacking skills with ingenious bank robberies while enjoying the support of most everyone not in uniform. He declined to flee overseas when he could, bound to win his jailed mother's freedom by any means possible, including his own surrender. In the end, however, she served out her sentence in the same Melbourne prison where, in 1880, her son was hanged.Still his country's most powerful legend, Ned Kelly is here chiefly a man in full: devoted son, loving husband, fretful father, and loyal friend, now speaking as if from the grave. With this mythic outlaw and the story of his mighty travails and exploits, and with all the force of a classic Western, Peter Carey has breathed life into a historical figure who transcends all borders and embodies tragedy, perseverance, and freedom. [via]
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The Truth About Celiaby Kevin BrockmeierISBN 0375421351 (0-375-42135-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faithby Jon KrakauerISBN 0375432213 (0-375-43221-3)
Hardcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith'Book summary:Under the Banner of Heaven is a riveting read. The Lafferty boys were brought up in a squeaky clean All-American family. So what made two of them follow revelations from God to slit the throat of their ex-beauty queen sister-in-law and her infant daughter? The problem was that they got involved in the fundamentalist, survivalist wing of the Mormon Church.
Author Jon Krakauer expertly jumps from the immediate horror of the Lafferty boys to the context of Mormonism and the wider questions of religious violence. In the process we are taken on a house of horrors ride through the badlands of fundamentalist Mormon religion. Krakauer introduces us to red necks with more than 30 "wives"--many who were "married" in their early teens. It's a story of fraud, child abuse, incest, physical violence and spiritual and emotional rape at a deep level.
The contemporary story is lurid and shocking, but as Krakauer relates the picaresque story of Joseph Smith--the founder of the Mormon religion--you realise that present day fundamentalist Mormons are far closer to their founder in spirit and behaviour than the more squeaky clean manifestations of modern Mormonism. This well researched and tightly written account gives a great potted history of Mormonism and illuminates the psychotic fringes of religious mentality. In doing so it reveals the wild dangers of spiritual free wheeling and the need for caution and restraint in religion. --Dwight Longenecker [via]
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The Unsubscriberby Bill KnottISBN 0374530149 (0-374-53014-9)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Unswept Roomby Sharon OldsISBN 0375414894 (0-375-41489-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Vindicationby Frances SherwoodISBN 0374283907 (0-374-28390-7)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Virgin Suicidesby Jeffrey EugenidesISBN 0374284385 (0-374-28438-5)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Virgin Suicides'Book summary:This beautiful and sad first novel, recently adapted for a major motion picture, tells of a band of teenage sleuths who piece together the story of a twenty-year old family tragedy begun by the youngest daughters spectacular demise by self-defenstration, which inaugurates the year of the suicides.[via]More editions of The Virgin Suicides:
Visions of Sugar Plumsby Janet EvanovichISBN 0375431888 (0-375-43188-8)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Visions of Sugar Plums'Book summary:Christmas in bounty hunter Stephanie Plum's world isn't quite like Christmas in Whoville. With only four days to go before December 25, she doesn't have a decorated tree in her apartment or any presents bought. Plus she's chasing an elusive bail-jumper named Sandy Claws; a hunky guy named Diesel is literally popping in and out of her apartment; and a mob of manic elves is threatening to assault her with cookies. The end result is that Stephanie is feeling a tad stressed over the holiday season. Life isn't any calmer over at her parents' home in the Burg, where Grandma Mazur is dating a new octogenarian stud muffin; sister Valerie is wailing over some unwelcome news; and Stephanie's mother is coping by belting back tumblers of Red Roses in the kitchen. Just where is the elusive Mr. Claws hiding, and why? What's causing the power blackouts all over Trenton? And what about the mysterious villain, Mr. Ring? Is all of this real, or is Stephanie just having a very bad dream?
Janet Evanovich's mysteries are eagerly awaited by fans everywhere and this holiday installment won't disappoint. With a returning cast of entertaining, quirky characters and a rock-solid setting in New Jersey wrapped around an intriguing mystery, Evanovich delivers yet another hilarious adventure featuring irrepressible bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. --Lois Faye Dyer [via]
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When I Grow Up, I Will Win the Nobel Peace Prizeby Isabel Pin, Nancy SeitzISBN 0374383138 (0-374-38313-8)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'When I Grow Up, I Will Win the Nobel Peace Prize'Book summary:[via]The boy in this book is having trouble admitting - much less closing - the large gap between his aspirations and his everyday actions. This boy knows that when he's older he will love his neighbor, but for now he's all too happy to pick on his sister. This boy even knows that one day he will be given the Nobel Peace Prize: for standing up to bullies, helping the poor, protecting animals and the environment - for all his good deeds. But with his bold claims continually contrasted by pictures that tell a very different story, even this boy eventually has to admit it's time to stop boasting and take the first step.
With cheeky artwork that offers a great big reality check to the high-minded protagonist, this book uses humor to underscore the importance - and the difficulty - of trying to live up to our own ideals.More editions of When I Grow Up, I Will Win the Nobel Peace Prize:
The Wolf Pitby Marly YoumansISBN 0374291950 (0-374-29195-0)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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