In the company of others : a Father Tim novel

 by Jan Karon. Father Tim Kavanagh first appeared in Karon's popular Mitford series, which focused on small-town life in rural North Carolina, and later launched his own series in Home to Holly Springs. This new novel finds him grudgingly traveling with his wife in Ireland. A series of mishaps leaves the Kavanaghs at an Irish lodge for the entire vacation, allowing them time to become caught up in the lives of the owners, uncovering old secrets and finding resolutions to generational conflicts. Verdict Travel might not suit Father Tim, but the new setting breathes new life into Karon's stories. The novel is at its best when the Irish characters are on stage, especially those whose story is told through an old journal. Fans will want to continue the series; enough backstory is provided to make this accessible to new readers. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

The Finkler question

 by Howard Jacobson. Julian Treslove is plagued by the notion that his life lacks substance. He has had only the most superficial relationships with women, two of whom bore him sons he has hardly seen, and his career is at an impasse, for he now makes his living as a celebrity double. He longs for the tangible lives of his best friends, both Jewish widowers. Middle-aged Sam Finkler is a wildly successful TV personality and author whose wife succumbed to cancer, while octogenarian Libor Sevick has lost the woman he was happily married to for more than 50 years. Julian becomes obsessed with the idea of becoming Jewish as a way to give his life meaning and embarks on a personal odyssey in which he learns Yiddish, takes a Jewish lover, and becomes involved with the Museum of Anglo-Jewish Culture. Jacobson uses Julian's transformation as a way of examining, often with a mordant wit reminiscent of comedian Larry David's, what it means to be Jewish. Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize, this novel also offers poignant insights into the indignities of aging, the competitiveness of male friendship, and the yearning to belong. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Hell's corner

 by David Baldacci. Shortly after the events related in Divine Justice (2008), Oliver Stone, former CIA assassin and now the leader of the shadowy group known as the Camel Club, is whisked away to a top-secret meeting with the president of the U.S. Russian drug cartels are operating on American soil, possibly with the approval if not the direct supervision of the Russian government. Stone's mission is to go to the drugs' point of entry, Latin America, and find a way to shut the cartels down. But before he can even begin his mission training, Stone finds himself in the middle of what appears to be a terrorist attack on the life of the British prime minister. Teaming up with a British intelligence agent, Stone attempts to determine if the attack is connected to the Russian drug-smuggling operation. The latest Camel Club novel is, as usual, skillfully constructed and very difficult to put down. Baldacci keeps peeling back layers of Stone's psyche, revealing him to be a man full of unresolved conflicts and a potentially self-destructive amount of guilt over his past actions. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Autobiography of Mark Twain. Volume 1

 In explaining his dissatisfaction with his early attempts to write his life story, Mark Twain blamed the narrowness of the conventional cradle-to-grave format: The side-excursions are the life of our life-voyage, and should be, also, of its history. This volume the first of three makes public autobiographical dictations in which Twain unpredictably pursues the many side-excursions of his remarkably creative life. Embedded in a substantial editorial apparatus, these free-spirited forays expose private aspects of character that the author did not want in print until he had been dead at least a century. Readers see, for instance, a misanthropic Twain consigning man to a status below that of the grubs and worms, as well as a tenderhearted Twain still grieving a year after his wife's death. But on some side-excursions, Twain flashes the irreverent wit that made him famous: Who will not delight in Twain's account of how, as a boy, he gleefully dons the bright parade banner of the local Temperance Lodge, only to shuck his banner upon finding a cigar stub he can light up? But perhaps the most important side-excursions are those retracing the imaginative prospecting of a miner for literary gold, efforts that resulted in such works as Roughing It and Innocents Abroad. A treasure trove for serious Twain readers. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The vigilante's bride

 by Yvonne L. Harris Emily McCarthy needs either a job or a husband. Since teaching posts for women are few and far between, Emily reluctantly accepts the mail-order-bride offer placed in the Chicago Daily Tribune by wealthy Montana rancher Bart Axel. On the way there, her stagecoach is held up. Luke Sullivan never intended to rescue Emily; he simply wanted the money Axel had cheated his father out of years ago. However, when Luke sees Axel's fiancée, he knows Emily has no idea of the kind of man she is about to marry, which leaves Luke with only one option: take Emily with him. Newcomer Harris enriches the plot with plenty of good, old-fashioned western ingredients, including cattle rustling, cowboys and Indians, evil villains, and a conflicted hero who is saved by the love of a good woman. Deftly imbued with both the realistic grit and the courageous spirit of those who settled the West, this is an excellent genre-crossing choice for both romance fans and western readers. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

I remember nothing : and other reflections

 by Nora Ephron.  The legions of readers who loved I Feel Bad about My Neck (2006) will pounce on Ephron's pithy new collection. A master of the jujitsu essay, Ephron leaves us breathless with rueful laughter. As the title suggests, she writes about the weird vagaries of memory as we age, although she is happy to report that the Senior Moment has become the Google Moment. Not that any gadget rescued her when she failed to recognize her own sister. But the truth is, Ephron remembers a lot. Take her stinging reminiscence of her entry into journalism at Newsweek in the early 1960s, when girls, no matter how well qualified, were never considered for reporter positions. An accomplished screenwriter (When Harry Met Sally . . . and Julie & Julia) in a family of screenwriters, Ephron looks further back to her Hollywood childhood and her mother's struggles with alcohol. Whether she takes on bizarre hair problems, culinary disasters, an addiction to online Scrabble, the persistent pain of a divorce, or that mean old devil, age, Ephron is candid, self-deprecating, laser-smart, and hilarious. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Now a popular blogger in addition to everything else, Ephron hit it so big with her last best-seller, a 500,000 print run is planned for her latest. --Booklist (Check catalog)

Life in miniature

 by Linda Schlossberg. Adie is the smallest girl in her sixth-grade class, a fact that makes her something of an outsider. But what really brands her as different is her single-parent mother, who is obsessed with California's drug culture of the 1980s, the milieu in which the story is set. The obsession grows into full-blown paranoia when mom starts to believe she is being stalked by drug dealers and, pulling Adie out of school, takes to the road. The two nomads begin living in motels where, Adie thinks, everything is scaled down, a smaller version of itself. Schlossberg's first novel is told from Adie's point of view and in her first person voice, which means that the girl, unlike the adults they encounter, fails to understand much of what is happening. Yet the mother's mental illness is so blatant that one wonders why no one intervenes and, the mother having quit her job, where the money comes from to support their flight. Despite these improbabilities, the book is inarguably well-written, and Adie becomes a fully realized character whose plight never fails to engage the reader. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Tax savvy for small business : year-round tax advice for small businesses

 by Frederick Daily. Understanding the tax system is vital to the health of every small business. Virtually every decision a business makes has tax consequences that can affect its bottom line -- and the IRS is always watching. Develop the best tax plan for your small business, learn the ins and outs of the tax code, and create comprehensive strategies to get back the most from the IRS with this all-in-one guide. --Publisher (Check catalog)

Unbroken : a World War II story of survival, resilience, and redemption

 by Laura Hillenbrandt. A second book by the author of Seabiscuit (2001) would get noticed, even if it weren't the enthralling and often grim story of Louie Zamperini. An Olympic runner during the 1930s, he flew B-24s during WWII. Taken prisoner by the Japanese, he endured a captivity harsh even by Japanese standards and was a physical and mental wreck at the end of the war. He was saved by the influence of Billy Graham, who inspired him to turn his life around, and afterward devoted himself to evangelical speeches and founding boys' camps. Still alive at 93, Zamperini now works with those Japanese individuals and groups who accept responsibility for Japanese mistreatment of POWs and wish to see Japan and the U.S. reconciled. He submitted to 75 interviews with the author as well as contributing a large mass of personal records. Fortunately, the author's skills are as polished as ever, and like its predecessor, this book has an impossible-to-put-down quality that one commonly associates with good thrillers. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: This departure from the author's previous best-seller will nevertheless be promoted as necessary reading for the many folks who enjoyed the first one or its movie version. --Booklist    (Check Catalog)

Crooked letter, crooked letter : a novel

 by Tom Franklin. *Starred Review* Rural Mississippi in the 1970s was rife with racial tension, but skin color didn't matter to boyhood companions Silas Jones and Larry Ott. Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother, and Larry, the child of white lower-middle-class parents, were both outsiders, Silas because of his color, Larry because he was quiet and a little odd, his nose always buried in horror novels. The young men's bond strengthened over time, until the night a pretty local girl went on a date with Larry to the drive-in movies and was never heard from again. No body was found and Larry never confessed, but that didn't keep the townspeople from suspecting him. Estranged from his friend, Silas heads off to college in Oxford, Mississippi, and more than 20 years later, returns to take a job as town constable. He sees no reason to contact Larry, who's settled into a lonely existence as a mechanic, unable to escape the relentless whispers and dirty looks. The disappearance of another girl brings the two former friends back together, forcing them to come to terms with buried secrets and dark truths. Edgar Award winner Franklin (Hell at the Breech, 2003) renders luminous prose and a cast of compelling characters in this moody, masterful entry. --Booklist (Check catalog)

How old is the universe?

 by David A. Weintraub. Since astronomers already know the answer to this eponymous question to an accuracy of better than one percent (13.7 billion years), this book might perhaps be more aptly titled How Do We Know How Old the Universe Is? Throughout the text, Weintraub (astronomy, Vanderbilt Univ.; Is Pluto a Planet?: A Historical Journey Through the Solar System) takes the reader steadily outward, explaining step by step how astronomers have gleaned key information from clever observations and a grounding in testable principles of physics. Unfortunately, once he begins his discussion of dark matter (about two-thirds of the way through), the science behind the claims of what is well known goes largely unexplained. Since he has done such a wonderful job of it up to this point, readers may forgive the necessity, especially since a graduate course or two would be required to follow all the intricacies. VERDICT Weintraub outlines the rigorous process astronomers have followed from Earth itself out to the edge of the observable universe and makes it accessible to the science-minded lay reader. Highly recommended. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

The four stages of cruelty

 by Keith Hollihan. Joshua Riff, a 19-year-old convict at Ditmarsh Penitentiary, puzzles Kali Williams, a 39-year-old corrections officer, in Hollihan's impressive first novel, a complex and atmospheric thriller. The other COs are protecting Josh by keeping him segregated in the infirmary next to an enigmatic inmate, Jon Crowley. Josh has been helping Crowley illustrate a densely symbolic comic book based on prison life called The Four Stages of Cruelty, which conjures up history from Ditmarsh's dark past. When Crowley disappears, Williams investigates on her own. The clues take her beneath the prison to the long-abandoned isolation chambers that older convicts refer to as "the City," and from there things really get interesting. Hollihan manages to combine a labyrinthine plot, full of intrigue, secret societies, and arcane lore, with a nuanced, character-driven narrative that provides insights into prison life while keeping readers guessing until the last page. --Library Journal. (Check Catalog)

Dreaming in Chinese : Mandarin lessons in life, love, and language

 by Deborah Fallows. Fallows manages to take the relatively dry subject of translation and create a warm and witty memoir. Dwelling less on her own feelings then on the intricacies of language mastery, she shares experiences after she and her husband moved to China that taught her just how complex Mandarin can be. Such as the fact that there are 400 syllables in Mandarin as opposed to 10 times that number in English, making tone crucial in conversation. Fallows makes all this fascinating by writing in a thoroughly engaging manner that not only invites readers into her experiences, but also delights them with her discoveries. There is confusion with a Cantonese cab driver, the manicurist who envisioned almost perfect happiness, and the employee at Taco Bell who thought Fallows wanted to hug him (she was inquiring about takeout). From observations about maps, naming children, and the struggle over one language for a nation where over 300 million speak something other than Mandarin, Fallows takes readers on a ride through Chinese culture that is as entertaining as it is informative. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

An object of beauty : a novel

 by Steve Martin. This thoroughly engaging primer on the art world is unusual on a number of levels. Although the lead characters are unlikable, the novel is hard to put down, offers an enlightening explication of how the market for art is created, and includes photos and absorbing detail on many of the artworks under discussion. The narrator, Daniel Franks, is an arts journalist who relates the story of avaricious, amoral Lacey Yeager, who is willing to do almost anything to move ahead in the art world. After landing an entry-level job at Sotheby's, where her stint cataloging dusty works in the basement helps develop her eye for good art, Lacey moves on to working in a gallery, where she makes many important connections among collectors and dealers before opening her own gallery in Chelsea. Along the way, she sleeps with artists, collectors, and, finally, an FBI agent who investigates malfeasance in the art world. This page-turner is likely to make readers feel like they have been given a backstage pass to an elite world few are privileged to observe. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The best-selling author draws on his experience as a renowned art collector for this clever, convincingly detailed depiction of NYC's art scene. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Jimmy Carter

 by Julian E. Zelizer. This latest volume in the Holt series of compact biographies of American presidents is written by a Princeton professor of history. When politicians, pundits, and even historians speak of a failed presidency, the Carter administration is often cited. The term may be simplistic, even unfair, yet this engaging survey indicates that it is a resonably accurate description of Carter's single term. Zelizer pays sufficient attention to Carter's youth, his rise through Georgia politics, and his postpresidential efforts at international mediation. But the most engrossing portion of the work deals with Carter's successes (there were some) and failures as president. He campaigned and won as a political outsider; unfortunately, he was unable to learn that he couldn't govern as an outsider. He lacked the traditional ties to the core elements of the Democratic Party. When the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan eroded his support among independent voters, he lacked a hard-core base to rally behind him. For general readers, this work offers a fine analysis of the man and his career. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Scarlet nights : an Edilean novel

 by Jude Deveraux. Undercover detective extraordinaire Mike Newland's new and urgent case sends him from Ft. Lauderdale to Edilean, Virginia, the setting for Deveraux's popular series. His job is to protect Sara Shaw, whose fiancé Greg is part of the notorious Vandlo crime family. Everyone in Edilean hates Greg except Sara, who stubbornly believes in Greg even after he disappears weeks away from their wedding. Mike figures it will be easy to get Sara to trust him; women have always been attracted to him. But Sara is the exception. Weary of being seen as weak, she believes hunky Mike, brother of her best friend, has been sent to tempt her away from marrying Greg. The longer Mike stays, however, the more appealing he becomes to Sara, and soon they begin revealing secrets to each other, including Mike's true mission. As Deveraux continues her series, she brings to life the sort of sweet and spunky heroines who attract the muscular men her fans expect and enjoy. So this is another guilty-pleasure romance of suspense that will hook readers and leave them with a smile. --Booklist. (Check catalog)

J.K. Lasser's your income tax

 A guide to income tax returns provides information on the most recent tax legislation, tax-filing tips, advice on how to reduce tax liabilities, helpful financial advice, and sample tax forms, worksheets, and charts. (Check Catalog)

Rescue : a novel

 by Anita Shreve.  Paramedic Pete Webster is worried sick about his daughter, Rowan, a high-school senior whom he has raised single-handedly ever since she was two. Rowan has adopted very untypical behavior, ignoring her studies and drinking heavily. It brings back bad memories of his ex-wife, Sheila. He pulled her from a car wreck while on the job and soon fell madly in love with her both for her beauty and her irreverent sense of humor. When she became pregnant, he married her though he was only 21. They were very happy until Sheila began drinking all day, every day. Now Pete is worried that their daughter believes she is doomed to repeat her mother's mistakes; he decides to contact Sheila, whom he has not seen or heard from for 16 years. The prolific Shreve brings her customary care to this thoroughly absorbing, perfectly paced domestic drama. Alternating between the life-and-death scenarios Pete encounters on the job and the fraught family tension between father and daughter, Shreve pulls readers right into her story. --Booklist. (Check Catalog)

Inside of a dog : what dogs see, smell and know

 by Alexandra Horowitz. Dogs have no sense of time; don't see in color; don't learn by observation-or do they? Cognitive scientist Horowitz (psychology, Barnard Coll.) explains that to understand the dog, we must understand his umwelt, his perception of his surroundings based upon anatomy, physiology, experience, and evolution. Debunking long-held misconceptions about the dog's sensory and emotional life, Horowitz gives dog lovers who have always believed that dogs can learn through example or anticipate an owner's return a wealth of current scientific information to confirm their perceptions. Verdict An essential read for pet owners and students of animal behavior who have followed developments in the emerging field of comparative psychology in Stanley Coren's How Dogs Think, Temple Grandin's Animals Make Us Human, and Patricia B. McConnell's Tales of Two Species. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Who loves you best : a novel

 by Tess Stimson. Clare and Marc Elias always planned on having children, so while the birth of their twins comes as no surprise, Clare's struggle to adapt to motherhood does. When trying to bond with her two infants proves just as difficult as balancing the career she refuses to give up, Clare hires a nanny named Jenna, despite Marc's protests. Although Jenna is dealing with her own personal drama, she soon gets entangled in the lives of the Elias family as things begin to unravel. In Who Loves You Best, Stimson manages to weave mystery, suspense, romance, and family into one exciting, emotionally honest story. Told in alternating narratives by the central characters, the story overlaps, revealing the different points of view of what is unfolding it is virtually impossible to know who to trust until the final page. The result is a very suspenseful story about a mother's love and what being a family ultimately means. --Boklist (Check Catalog)

Unbearable lightness : a story of loss and gain

 Portia De Rossi. Anorexia was my first love, de Rossi declares in her memoir of her early Hollywood career and the eating disorders that went along with it. Her unflinching self-portrait depicts a cripplingly self-conscious young Australian in LA overwhelmed by the pressure to be thin. Never comfortable in her own skin, a by-product of her status as a closeted lesbian, de Rossi was sure if she ever gained weight (or came out as being gay), the shooting star she'd been cultivating would turn to lead. Weight loss was the key that allowed de Rossi to feel powerful and in control, until dieting became a sickness that nearly killed her and devastated her family. De Rossi's story and words are not revolutionary, but they are frank, brave, and revelatory of the unhealthy trends that stardom can generate. Although more development of de Rossi's happy ending (her eventual complete recovery, self-acceptance, coming-out, and marriage to Ellen DeGeneres) would be welcome, the book succeeds as it's intended: a journal of her sickness and a provocatively sad love affair with dieting. --Booklist

The slap

 by Christos Tsiolkas. Although this is Australian author Tsiolkas' fourth novel, it is the first to be published in the U.S. With its raw style, liberal use of profanity and racial epithets, and laserlike focus on the travails of suburban life, it is a down-and-dirty version of Tom Perrotta's best-selling Little Children (2004). At a barbecue in a Melbourne suburb, a man loses his temper and slaps the child of the host's friends. This incident unleashes a slew of divisive opinions, pitting friends and families against each other as the child's parents take the man to court. Told from eight different viewpoints, the novel also deftly fills in disparate backstories encompassing young and old, single and married, gay and straight, as well as depicting how multiculturalism is increasingly impacting the traditional Aussie ethos. For good measure, the author also throws in male vanity, infidelity, and homophobia. Tsiolkas' in-your-face style is sure to alienate some readers the child's parents, for example, are among the book's most unlikable characters but his novel, which won the 2009 Commonwealth Prize, fairly radiates with vitality as it depicts the messy complications of family life. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The mind's eye

 by Oliver W. Sacks. Sacks, famous for combining his knowledge as a physician and his compassion for human stories of coping with neurological disorders, offers case histories of six individuals adjusting to major changes in their vision. A renowned pianist has lost the ability to read music scores and must cope with the fear of an ever-shrinking life as her vision worsens. A prolific writer develops word blindness and is unable to read even what he himself writes, forcing him to develop memory books in his mind, adaptations that he later incorporates into his fiction writing. Sacks recalls his own struggle to cope with a tumor in his eye that left him unable to perceive depth. He includes diary entries and drawings of his harrowing experience. Sacks, author of the acclaimed Musicophilia (2007), among other titles, combines neurobiology, psychology, and psychiatry in this riveting exploration of how we use our vision to perceive and understand the world and our place in it and how our brains teach us to see those things we need to lead a complete, fulfilled life. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Fly away home : a novel

 by Jennifer Weiner. Weiner (Good in Bed; In Her Shoes) started writing this novel long before the parade of philandering politicians filled our national consciousness. Who knew that Sylvie Serfer's fictional life as a politician's wife would mirror reality so closely? Far from being an overwrought tale of the wronged woman, this is an honest narrative about the expectations of being a woman with a capital W: standing by your man, being a mother, and wondering where one's dreams have gone. Even though this could have simply been the ballad of Sylvie Serfer, daughters Lizzie, the self-described "basket case" and recovering addict, and Diana, a driven emergency room physician with a seemingly perfect life, enliven the novel even more. At times, the up-to-the-minute cultural references distract one from the story but not enough to mar what is otherwise a funny, heartfelt read. Verdict Sylvie, Lizzie, and Diana are complex characters who never slip into the shallow stereotypes of the good girl or the bad girl. Highly recommended for Weiner's fans and readers who enjoy women's fiction. --Library Journal (Check catalog)

Must you go? : my life with Harold Pinter

 by Antonia Fraser. Fraser is a highly regarded British biographer, and the late Harold Pinter, her husband, was a Nobel-winning British playwright. So, the circle they generally traveled in was made up of not only fellow writers but also, because of their individual and combined celebrity, fellow celebrities. Fraser's latest book is both joyous and sad. The former because she shares diary entries concerning her relationship with Pinter (they lived together from August 1975 until Christmas 2008), and it was obviously a stimulating love-match. And sad because the book ends when it does because of Pinter's death from cancer; his struggle with the disease had been years-long. As expected, given their fame and the fame of their associates, lots of name-dropping goes on here. This is not, of course, the story of two starving artists trying to scratch together a living in some cold-water flat. But privileged as they were, they nevertheless experienced the normal highs and lows together, and the result is a poignant read. Serious readers will generate demand for this title, and they will respond with gratitude to Fraser's intimacy. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The distant hours : a novel

 by Kate Morton. Morton (The Forgotten Garden) has quickly established herself as a master of modern gothic, producing complicated and completely satisfying historical mysteries. Her third novel solidifies her dominion. As a wartime evacuee from London at the time of the Blitz, 13-year-old Meredith Baker is in awe both of the ancient Milderhurst castle where she is staying and of its inhabitants, the Blythes-sweet and maternal Saffy; her shrewd twin, Percy; and the wild and talented Juniper, who becomes Meredith's best friend. Fifty years later, a lost letter arrives to remind Meredith of her time at Milderhurst, even though she has long tried to bury the memory. It falls to her daughter, Edie, to begin to untangle her mother's secrets. The trail leads back to Milderhurst and the -Blythes and into an even thicker nest of hidden mysteries that Edie is determined to uncover. VERDICT Featuring a fresh and thrilling gothic mystery, cinematic storytelling, and fully developed characters who possess layers of deliciously surprising secrets, this complex story is developed at a leisurely but compelling pace that keeps readers hooked. Recommended for a wide readership, including mystery lovers and historical fiction fans. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Atlantic : great sea battles, heroic discoveries, titanic storms, and a vast ocean of a million stories

 by Simon Winchester. How does one attempt to write a biography of a subject as old and vast as an ocean? Driven by a lifelong fascination with the Atlantic, Winchester (The Professor and the Madman) found inspiration in viewing the ocean and our relationship with it through the categories of Shakespeare's seven ages: infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, old age, and second childhood. Employing a mixture of history, science, and anecdotes from both sides of the Atlantic, he envisions the ocean's birth and eventual death and explores how its boundaries were discovered and defined, the many ways it has affected the development of human society (artistically, militarily, industrially), and humanity's effect on it in turn. Though the sheer size of the subject obviously limits how much of the Atlantic's "life" can be related in a single volume, Winchester does an excellent job at presenting an extensive collection of the most interesting parts of its existence. VERDICT Winchester is in fine form, and his typically engaging style creates a vibrant portrait of an ocean that remains endlessly fascinating. Highly recommended, especially for those who have enjoyed the author's previous works. --Library Journal (Check catalog)

I still dream about you : a novel

 by Fannie Flagg. Will she or won't she kill herself? Jumping in the river to die is Birmingham realtor Maggie Fortenberry's grand obsession. A former Miss Alabama beauty queen who never married, Maggie wants out before she gets further along past six decades. Something of a dreamer, as well as a lover of Hollywood's "Glorious Technicolor" era gone by, Maggie sees no future for herself. Her boss, a gloriously upbeat midget named Hazel whom everyone adored, is now deceased, and the economy is in a meltdown. How will her meticulously planned suicide affect Brenda, her best friend and business partner, an African American woman gearing up to run for mayor of Birmingham? When a rival realtor gets the listing for a grand old house named Crestview, Maggie is tempted to stick around. Verdict Only Flagg (Can't Wait To Get to Heaven) could manage to make a novel about suicide so delightfully bubbly, punchy, and entertaining. Not to be missed. --Library Journal (Check catalog)

Peace meals : candy-wrapped Kalashnikovs and other war stories

 by Anna Badkhen. "What happens when a search for stories coincides with a search for food?" asks Russian-born journalist Badkhen in her first book. In a series of broadly linked personal narratives, she illuminates the strange, dark history of the past couple of decades-the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and drought-stricken East Africa. Most chapters chronicle her connections with particular individuals such as her hashish-addicted Afghan bodyguard or the pair of ordinary Iraqi women she befriends, each character providing insight into local customs and quirks, but more significantly, illustrates and humanizes regional complexities. Badkhen regularly encounters real danger, but meets it with compassion and graveyard humor. Each section concludes, somewhat sentimentally, with recipes for dishes described in the stories. At times the juxtaposition of the brutal and the domestic is abrupt, but the resulting range of events both large and small is both honest and real. --Publishers Weekly. (Check catalog)

Eighteen acres : a novel

 by Nicolle Wallace. Imagine the Republican Party winning the 45th presidency and also making history by inaugurating the first woman President. In her debut novel, Wallace capably visualizes this scenario while infusing the story with the richness of her professional experiences as political commentator, White House communications director under George W. Bush, and adviser to the campaigns of John McCain and Sarah Palin. President Charlotte Kramer is well served by her highly competent chief of staff, Melanie Kingston, as she faces a tough economy, the rigors of the Afghanistan war, low poll numbers, daunting reelection prospects, and a disintegrating marriage. Equally entertaining to envision is how a "First Man" might fare. Mr. Kramer, an entrepreneurial agent for NFL athletes, maintains his own schedule, lives in separate quarters, spends quality time with their teenage twins, and, feeling increasingly distanced from his spouse, falls in love with a young, bright, and ambitious White House correspondent. VERDICT An insider's politically balanced view into the 18 acres of the White House, its politics, and the intriguing affairs of state. A must for political junkies and fans of political fiction. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

The lost art of reading : why books matter in a distracted time

 by David L. Ulin. Expanding on a 2009 essay, Ulin, former book review editor of the Los Angeles Times, addresses the act of reading and its place in our information overloaded age. Ulin relies mainly on his own experiences as a loyal reader-specifically a recent attempt to reread The Great Gatsby alongside his son Noah's high school English class-which goes devastatingly wrong ("You'd fail if you were in my class," Noah pronounces). Ulin uses this incident to frame the larger narrative, fluently addressing the art and craft of literature, the reader's participation, the writer and the writing-and the act of rereading. He addresses in greater depth distractions from reading, specifically the ever-present seductions of technology, and the experience of reading on a screen. Moving toward an optimistic note, Ulin argues that technology can enlarge us, citing Rick Moody and Jennifer Egan as writers who embrace this ever-changing landscape. Ulin's short book not only puts forth a strong and passionate case for reading but also compiles a reading list of writers and critics (e.g., Anne Fadiman, Joan Didion, David Shields) who have influenced Ulin and who are well worth reading. --Publishers Weekly (Check Catalog)

Djibouti

 by Elmore Leonard. Crime fiction grand master Leonard, who turns 85 in October, remains in top form. He has a new publisher and a new subject Somalian pirates but all the signature Leonard elements are shining as brightly as ever: the back-and-forth banter, always oozing wit but never too smart for the room; the cast of wonderfully idiosyncratic characters, each capable of a star turn; the always startling juxtaposition of the mundane against the violent. This time, mixed in with all of that, Leonard gives us one of his trickiest plots and cleverest turns of storytelling. Dara Barr is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, recently arrived in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa (the gateway to Islam . . . or the back door to the West) to film Somalian pirates in action. With her assistant, a 72-year-old sailor named Xavier, Dara, armed with a concealed spy camera, sets off onboard the Buster in search of pirates. She finds plenty, but she and Xavier also land in the middle of an al-Qaeda plot to blow up a tanker loaded with liquefied natural gas. Portions of the tale are related in real time, but much of the narration comes in the form of Dara and Xavier viewing film of what's already happened and debating how to structure the documentary. This curious dramatic technique works magnificently, taking us inside the characters in a way that straight, action-oriented narration might not do. Leonard never tells a story in the expected way, but this time he outdoes himself. Marvelous entertainment. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Cleopatra : a life

 by Stacy Schiff. For those who think they know enough about Cleopatra or have the enigmatic Egyptian queen all figured out, think again. Schiff, demonstrating the same narrative flair that captivated readers of her Pulitzer Prize-winning Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) (1999), provides a new interpretation of the life of one of history's most enduringly intriguing women. Rather than a devastatingly beautiful femme fatale, Cleopatra, according to Schiff, was a shrewd power broker who knew how to use her manifold gifts wealth, power, and intelligence to negotiate advantageous political deals and military alliances. Though long on facts and short on myth, this stellar biography is still a page-turner; in fact, because this portrait is grounded so thoroughly in historical context, it is even more extraordinary than the more fanciful legend. Cleopatra emerges as a groundbreaking female leader, relying on her wits, determination, and political acumen rather than sex appeal to astutely wield her power in order to get the job done. Ancient Egypt never goes out of style, and Cleopatra continues to captivate successive generations. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Fall of giants

 by Ken Follett. Moving from the medieval world of the best-selling The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, Follett's new historical novel is the first volume of a projected trilogy that follows five families-Welsh, English, German, Russian, and American-through the turbulent 20th century. Covering the period 1911-23, the narrative moves from family to family, country to country, as the Great War impends, happens, and closes. In the first pages, a Welsh boy enters the coal mines; he has just turned 13 that day. He can expect a short and dirty life, but it doesn't turn out that way. The book closes in confrontation: the ninth-richest man in Britain, Earl Fitzherbert, is forced by his own sense of manners to shake the hand of a bastard son he has never acknowledged. Fitz seduced the boy's mother when she was his housemaid. Now she's a Labour MP in the postwar coalition government. Fitz is the past. She's the future. The Great War has changed everything, even for the winners. Verdict Though lengthy, Fall of Giants never seems too long or confusing. Great fun, this is sure to be one of the best sellers of the fall season. The global broadcast of a TV miniseries based on The Pillars of the Earth starring Ian McShane and Donald Sutherland is sure to garner even more attention. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Amexica : war along the borderline

 by Ed Vulliamy. This engrossing travelogue traces the fraught Mexican-American border, where the collision of affluence and poverty is mediated by an ultraviolent narco-traficante culture. Vulliamy (Seasons in Hell) journeys from Tijuana, where the ruthless Arellano Felix Organization cartel battles rivals, to the Atlantic coast, where the even more ruthless Zetas cartel, armed with grenades and rocket launchers, battles the Mexican army and besieges whole cities. In the middle is Juarez, the world's most violent town, an anarchy of contending cartels, street gangs, and their police and military allies, where massacres, beheadings, and grisly sex murders are routine. Vulliamy's border isn't all drugs and killings; it's also narco-corrida songs that celebrate drugs and killings, the American gun industry that feeds off drug money and enables the killings, and a presiding quasi-Catholic cult of Santissima Muerte (holiest death). The author's take isn't entirely coherent. Sometimes the border is the problem, an artificial rupture that provokes turf battles over prime smuggling sites; sometimes, presented less persuasively, the lawless border is just a symptom of global capitalism, like the desperate illegal immigrants and exploited maquiladora workers (in foreign-owned low-wage factories along the border) he profiles. Although not especially deep, Vulliamy's is a vivid, disturbing dispatch from a very wild frontier. --Publishers Weekly (Check Catalog)

Revolution

 by Jennifer Donnely. Donnelly follows her Printz Honor Book, A Northern Light (2003), with another gripping, sophisticated story, but this time she pairs historical fiction with a wrenching contemporary plotline. After her little brother's murder and her mother's subsequent breakdown, high-school-senior Andi feels like a ghost. She is furious at her father, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist with a 25-year-old pregnant girlfriend, when he arranges for Andi to join him in Paris: Sure. My brother's dead. My mother's insane. Hey, let's have a crepe. In France though, Andi, a passionate musician, discovers a diary written during the French Revolution by a young woman with whom Andi develops an increasing fascination. Donnelly links past and present with distracting contrivances culminating in time travel that work against the novel's great strengths. But the ambitious story, narrated in Andi's grief-soaked, sardonic voice, will wholly capture patient readers with its sharply articulated, raw emotions and insights into science and art; ambition and love; history's ever-present influence; and music's immediate, astonishing power: It gets inside of you . . . and changes the beat of your heart. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Playing the game

 by Barbara Taylor Bradford. Bradford's latest is set in the London art scene, where 39-year-old Annette Remmington has just made her first huge sale: a Rembrandt painting discovered by a young man who inherited an estate from his eccentric uncle. Suddenly Annette is the darling of the art world, and her husband, Marius, is determined to make sure she manages her success properly. Two decades older than Annette and very controlling, he hand-selects one journalist out of the many who want to interview Annette for a profile.The journalist Marius picks is Jack Chalmers, a dashing up-and-comer who is 10 years younger than Annette. Despite the age difference, sparks fly the minute they meet, and it isn't long before Annette and Jack give in to their powerful mutual attraction. But Annette is tied to Marius not just by marriage but also by a secret that she fears could destroy her if it ever came to light. There is plenty of intrigue, secrets, and steamy encounters in Taylor's scintillating novel. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Awarded the OBE by the Queen, Taylor writes international bestsellers of substance and glamor. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The facebook effect

*Starred Review* The greatest measure of the appeal of a business narrative is its story-ability, that is, the ways in which the tale of a corporation's ups and downs grabs its readers. Such is the case with Fortune magazine journalist Kirkpatrick's look at Facebook and its growth. The reason? In part because its co-founder now CEO Mark Zuckerberg allowed almost unprecedented access to the author--not one but several times. The results seems to mirror Zuckerberg's insistence on an open and transparent dialogue with itself and with its customers. Starting from a 2003 Harvard campus Web site created to keep track of schoolmates, Facebook has grown in less than a decade to nearly a half billion users and multimillions in revenues, a growth trajectory credited to its C-suite's unwavering vision and its continual innovations--including News Feed, multiple applications, and self-service advertising. Talented people, too, add to the explosion that is Facebook; Kirkpatrick's pages are populated with names like Steve Ballmer, Lawrence Summers, Larry Brin, and lesser-known others who've contributed to this social networking phenomenon. Kirkpatrick also keeps his superlatives in check, weaving stories about Zuckerberg and his cadre while clearly showing the warts as well. An intriguing, almost participatory, read.--by David Kirkpatrick

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The dirty life : on farming, food, and love

by Kristin Kimball
Journalist Kimball accepts an assignment to interview a lanky, determined Pennsylvania farmer who runs a community farm supplying subscribers with beef, chicken, pork, vegetables, and grains. He may look a rustic, but he has a college degree and a burning passion for natural living and initiating a barter economy. The interview very quickly turns into something of a date. His visit to her on the Lower East Side of Manhattan only intensifies these two disparate characters' mutual attraction, and they soon launch a dream farm in the Adirondacks. She proves an eager, but inept, partner who must quickly shed her urban inhibitions and learn to slop pigs and slaughter chickens. Planning a wedding that will satisfy both the couple's rustic friends as well as her urbane family proves daunting. Kimball has a gift for throwing into high relief contemporary Americans' disconnect between farm-life realities and city ambitions.

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Nannies and au pairs : hiring in-home childcare

by Ilona Bray
Whether you've got a new baby, toddler, or grade-schooler, turning your child over to someone else is a big transition. What's the difference between a nanny and an au pair? How will you find a care giver you trust? How much will in-home care cost? Will you feel forced to pay under the table?

This book will help you define your needs, and how a nanny might help fill them. Covers-- Sharing care with another family.  Tax and other legal obligations -- Advertising-- Prescreening, interviewing, and background checks -- Making an offer -- Developing and adjusting a routine -- How to keep a nanny you like -- Ending the relationship.

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Tales from the sausage factory

 by Daniel J. Feldman. "...an unusual collaboration between Daniel L. Feldman, a Democrat who represented southern Brooklyn in the Assembly from 1981 through 1998, and Gerald Benjamin, a Republican and a political scientist ... Both are pragmatists, preaching that the perfect is the enemy of the good." ---New York Times ------- "Tales from the Sausage Factory is a must read for anyone interested in the Byzantine workings of the New York State government. Two of the most knowledgeable authorities on New York State government, Gerald Benjamin and Daniel Feldman, have taken on the task of telling us how it relly works. Feldman, a former state legislator, and Benjamin, who has done it all and seen it all as a practitioner, professor, and pundit, really help bring it into perspective. The case studies in the book make it all accessible and understandable. I recommend this book, without reservation." ---Alan Chartock, President and CEO, WAMC/Northeast Public Radio. -------  "Those of us who have watched New York State government up close for many years often wonder how so many good ideas wind up on the scrap heap, and why so many well-intentioned legislators lose hope for meaningful progress. Two of the state's most insightful analysts of the legislature, Dan Feldman and Jerry Benjamin, answer those questions in this book. Throught revealing anecdotes and careful research, they open a window into the way things go in Albany. What we see often isn't pretty, but it's fascinating---and it's important to know." ---Rex Smith, Editor and Vice President, Albany Times Union (Check Catalog)

Freedom

 by Jonathan Franzen. Patty, a Westchester County high-school basketball star, should have been a golden girl. Instead, her ambitious parents betray her, doing her grievous psychic harm. Hardworking Minnesotan Walter wants to be Patty's hero, and she tries to be a stellar wife and a supermom to Joey and Jessica, their alarmingly self-possessed children, but all goes poisonously wrong. Patty longs for Richard, Walter's savagely sexy musician friend. Walter's environmental convictions turn perverse once he gets involved in a diabolical scheme that ties protection of the imperiled cerulean warbler to mountaintop-removal coal mining in West Virginia. Richard is traumatized by both obscurity and fame. Joey runs amok in his erotic attachment to the intense girl-next-door and in a corrupt entrepreneurial venture connected to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The intricacies of sexual desire, marriage, and ethnic and family inheritance as well as competition and envy, beauty and greed, nature and art versus profit and status, truth and lies all are perceptively, generously, and boldly dramatized in Franzen's first novel since the National Book Award-winning The Corrections (2001). Passionately imagined, psychologically exacting, and shrewdly satirical, Franzen's spiraling epic exposes the toxic ironies embedded in American middle-class life and reveals just how destructive our muddled notions of entitlement and freedom are and how obliviously we squander life and love. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

A small furry prayer : dog rescue and the meaning of life

 Steven Kotler. Dog rescuers remove dogs from shelters and care for them until they are ready for adoption, focusing on those most likely to be overlooked and sometimes ending up with them as "lifers." Kotler (West of Jesus: Surfing, Science, and the Origins of Belief) became involved with dog rescue when he became involved with novelist Joy Nicholson, a committed rescuer; in a matter of weeks, they were compelled to move their dogs ("One dog is a pet, eight is a pack") from California to Chimayo, NM, a rough neighborhood but the only place they could afford that offered enough room. As he recounts their life in Chimayo (the pack at times approaches 50, all entertainingly delineated), Kotler seamlessly blends a history of Chimayo, a well-articulated understanding of how humans and dogs coevolved, and background on animal welfare efforts in this country with his witty, sharp-edged, and rewarding reflections on life. Verdict Kotler defiantly proclaims his love of Chihuahuas (he's hilarious), then shatters our hearts and ends by laying down a real ethical challenge. Highly recommended not only for dog lovers but for readers of memoir, biology, and anthropology and seekers generally. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Four freedoms

 by John Crowley.  Although nominally about life at an American aircraft factory during World War II, Crowley's complex and subtle novel is much grander. He explores the minds and hearts of people compelled by history to radically change their lives. Unaccountably optimistic Prosper Olander, orphaned as a child and crippled by a failed surgery, discovers that even he can find important work at a distant aircraft company in rural Oklahoma. Connie Wrobleski, frightened of nearly everything except her infant son, also travels to Oklahoma to reunite with her domineering husband, only to see him desert his family by enlisting. Prosper, Connie, and half a dozen other characters are developed in intricate detail and used as lenses on the massive relocation, dislocation, and societal change caused by the war. Crowley's characters offer depth, nuance, and pathos to the traditional image of Rosie the Riveter. Four Freedoms is also a triumph of both research and imagination. Crowley's aircraft company is an invention, but his detailed descriptions of sights, smells, and sounds in the plant, and his evocation of everyday life at home during WWII, are compelling. A wonderful novel that readers won't soon forget

Mindsight : the new science of personal transformation

 by Daniel Siegel. The concept of emotional intelligence, or EI, rather than IQ as the true barometer of social success has been a hot topic in psychological circles since Daniel Goleman's landmark Emotional Intelligence (1995). Yet, according to UCLA psychiatrist Siegel, Goleman's personal friend and fellow Harvard alum, the notion of mindsight, or the mind's knack for stepping back and analyzing its own thought processes, is just as critical. Drawing on cutting-edge neurobiological research and Eastern meditation practices as well as studies conducted by his own, L.A.-based Mindsight Institute, Siegel presents a convincing case that mindsight's dual focus on mindfulness and empathy can literally rewire the brain and catalyze greater personal fulfillment. In 12 lucid yet scientifically grounded chapters, he provides the evidence for mindsight's powerful effect on human behavior and then presents a guidebook for developing and applying mindsight in one's life. Unlike his earlier, more academic works, Mindsight is refreshingly accessible, offering solid practical advice while avoiding the naive optimism of many mainstream self-help books. -Booklist (Check catalog)

The fort : a novel of the Revolutionary War

 by Bernard Cornwell. Cornwell turns his key historical eye on the Penobscot Expedition, a little-known episode in the annals of the Revolutionary War that culminated in a resounding naval defeat for the fledgling U.S. Grounding his story in primary sources, including diaries, letters, and court transcripts, and animating a cast of real-life historical characters, he fleshes out the story of the vastly outmanned British infantry troops who stood their ground against a numerically superior naval fleet launched to summarily expel them. After establishing a shaky outpost in Penobscot, Maine then the eastern province of Massachusetts in 1779, the British forces and a band of loyalist colonists were beset by a large fleet and a sizable militia sent by the state of Massachusetts. Intent on establishing a siege, the American contingent, undermined by martial miscalculations and surprised by uncompromising resistance, was eventually thwarted by the enemy. Illuminating the battle from all angles and telling the story from both sides, Cornwell once again offers a fresh perspective on a stirring episode in martial history. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The grand design

 by Stephen Hawking. The idea of the multiverse that the observable universe in which we live doesn't exist independently, apart from anything else, but is one member of an enormous collection of physically real universes has been propagated to nonscientists by such physicist-authors as Michio Kaku (Parallel Worlds, 2004) and Leonard Susskind (The Cosmic Landscape, 2006). However laudable their popular-science efforts, Stephen Hawking's pitch of the multiverse concept likely will reach more readers not solely due to his world-wide fame but also because of the efficiently precise, understandable, and lightly jesting prose of Hawking and coauthor Mlodinow (also a physicist and author). Posing simple, fundamental questions such as, Why do we exist? the authors employ word pictures, analogies to everyday experience, but (blessedly) no equations to convey the physics that are involved in the answer this book ultimately offers. Sympathetically noting that quantum mechanics and general relativity remain as counterintuitive to experts as to laypeople, Hawking and Mlodinow alight on the probabilistic nature of energy and matter, frames of reference, string theory, and the incredibly finely-tuned values of physical forces and masses that permit life to exist, combining their presentations into the propositions of M-theory about what initiated the big bang. Repetition of the multi-mega-copy sales of A Brief History of Time (1988) can be safely predicted; expect queues in stores and libraries for Hawking's latest parting of the veil to far-out physics. --Booklist (Check catalog)