Gotham Tragic by Kurt Wenzel
Kurt Wenzel's quick moving new novel Gotham Tragic is the sequel to his debut Lit Life. Wenzel's novel is an amusing look at the New York publishing hi-life in which a group of militant Muslims declare a fatwa against an arrogant author. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
From Cornelia Funke, the author of the international best-selling novel THE THIEF LORD: One night Meggie's father, Mo, reads aloud from a book called INKHEART, and an evil ruler named Capricorn escapes the boundaries of fiction and lands in their living room. Suddenly, Meggie is smack in the middle of the kind of adventure she has only read about in books.
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven tells the story of two fundamentalist Mormon brothers who took their faith to the ultimate extreme. It explores the horrific murder of the wife and child of Ron and Dan Lafferty’s younger brother as well as the frightening aspect of Mormon fundamentalism. Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer
Geoff Dyer is argumentatively one of the whiniest people on the planet. He begins the his surprisingly compelling 1997 memoir by endlessly vacillating about whether to write a sober, academic study of D.H. Lawrence. After bambling back and forth as in this way, he then proceeds to hedge about where he should live in order to write the study. Diary by Chuck Palahniuk
For the first time since his first novel, Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk is writing in a woman's voice, albeit the obsessed and borderline deranged voice of Diary's "heroine." However, the urgency and broken speech are so reminiscent of his earlier work that it could very well be the fantasy of Fight Club's truly psychotic narrator. Falling Out of Cars by Jeff Noon
The world is contemporary Britain, or nearly so-a virus has been let loose that interferes with its victims' ability to interpret symbolic representations: words drift away on pages, street signs lose their iconic meanings, photographs blur beyond recognition, and mirrors have become a gateway to madness. Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich
Backed by anonymous investors and armed only with their audacity and their intellect, a team of MIT math students cleaned Vegas out of more than $3 million in a couple of years. They used published card-counting techniques and worked in teams like secret agents. They were a dream team. So why did they get caught? Mr. Paradise by Elmore Leonard
Elmore Leonard’s Mr. Paradise is a roller coaster ride of a murder investigation that shows us the seedier sides of people and places usually only seen by cops and their quarry. This master storyteller’s latest suspense thriller does not fail to surprise and delight as we stumble along with his star detective down the road to the truth, and maybe even a little justice. The Bay of Noon
"The Bay of Noon" is Shirley Hazzard's 1970 classic story about a friendship between two women; Jenny, an English diplomatic assistant on assignment in post-WWII Italy. And Gioconda, the sole mistress of a decaying ancestral home rooted in the heart of Naples. Over the Edge of the World
In Over the Edge of the World, an engaging account of Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe, Laurence Bergreen draws the early sixteenth century with so much seethingly lifelike detail that the reader is drawn into the story even as Magellan himself remains something of an enigma. Middlesex
To call Middlesex a coming-of-age novel about a hermaphrodite would be like calling The Odyssey a story about some guy on a boat. Middlesex is nothing short of epic; one family's survival on a twisted path through Greece to 20th Century America; the igniting of Michigan race riots, and the burning desires hidden within a girl named Callie and the man named Cal who she is to become. The Secret Life of Bees
In "The Secret Life of Bees," Sue Monk Kidd wraps a coming-of-age tale around a search for one's mother, plunks it down into the racially-charged South Carolina of the civil rights movement and sets it all alight with a dose of feminine spirituality. True Notebooks
When Mark Salzman is invited to visit a writing class at Central Juvenile Hall, a lockup for Los Angeles’s most violent teenage offenders, he scrambles for a polite reason to decline. He goes—expecting the worst—and is so astonished by what he finds that he becomes a teacher there himself. True Notebooks is an account of Salzman’s first years teaching at Central. Inside George Orwell
The privelaged son of well-to-do parents had auspicious beginnings, studying at Eton College, but opted out of his social caste for work as a British policeman in Burma. His subsequent transitions were equally drastic - tramp, dishwasher, anti-Facist radical - Orwell, a man with eclectic interests, gathered these experiences into the essays and novels for which he is revered today. Before, During & After: Poems
Hal Sirowitz, a cult figure of sorts in literary circles throughout the world, is a poet, a performance artist, a comedian, a teacher, and an all-around good guy. In his new book, Before, During, and After, he explores his tumultuous (and sometimes nonexistent) sex life. The Names of Rivers by Daniel Buckman
Watega County is supposedly somewhere in Illinois, but Daniel Buckman places it smack dab in the twilight zone. Every man in every generation of the farming and factory families of Watega County went off to war, and for each lucky enough to return home, time stopped. Hardcore Zen by Brad Warner
In his new book, Brad Warner explores Buddhism and metaphysics through a philosophy he dubs "Hardcore Zen." The "Hardcore" refers to hardcore punk music of the early '80s. "Zen" is the ancient Japanese form of Buddhism where the trick to knowing everything is achieved by understanding that knowledge doesn't exist. In "Hardcore Zen," Warner plays the philosophical alchemist, , melding the two. Dogme Uncut by Jack Stevenson
In 1995, an irreverent group of Danish film directors gave birth to a new aesthetic known as Dogme 95. Launched by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg the movement preached a back-to-basics style of filmmaking at odds with mainstream trends. "Hegemony or Survival" by Noam Chomsky
From Noam Chomsky, the world's foremost intellectual activist, "Hegemony or Survival" is an irrefutable analysis of America's pursuit of total domination and the catastrophic consequences that are sure to follow. "The Pleasure of My Company" by Steve Martin
Daniel Pecan resides in his Santa Monica apartment, living much of his life as a bystander: He watches from his window as the world goes by, and his only relationships seem to be with people who barely know he exists. He passes the time idly filling out contest applications, counting ceiling tiles, and estimating the wattage of light bulbs. Burning Garbo
So what's the state of the new wave, contemporary mystery? It's niddy-gritty. It's stripped-down, moving fast, landing neat. It's fueled by the ghost of Chandler, shooting straight for the glitzy heart of LaLa Land and the megabuck big screen. Emperor: The Gates of Rome
In the first book of his "Emperor" series, Conn Iggulden "has turned the story of Julius Caesar into a tale of high adventure, a blood-soaked, sword-swinging epic that brings a number of vivid characters to life." Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs : A Low Culture Manifesto
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs reminds me of a drunken night out with friends discussing the parallels between Three's Company and the bible or recounting childhood rules of kickball or other such topics that occupy the minds of the over-educated, under-challenged class. Sex and Sunsets
Kelly Palamino is not - I repeat, NOT - crazy. Yes, water does talk to him: his toilet tells him to eat fish; his Water Pik quotes Ezra Pound. His ex-wife denies they were ever married and is actively seeking to have him committed. But Kelly Palamino is not crazy. Lost? Yes… but not crazy. Feeding a Yen
In "Feeding a Yen," Calvin Trillin's most recent collection of food essays, we tag along as he seeks out such delicacies as pimientos de Padron in Spain, pan bagnat in Nice and boudin in Louisiana. These are foods that comprise Trillin's "Register of Frustration and Deprivation"...
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