Fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm : a new English version

On the 200th anniversay of the first publication of Grimms' fairy tales (Kinder- und Hausmarchen), celebrated British author Pullman retells 50 of what he calls the cream of the brothers' 210 tales. Many of his selections are familiar ( Snow White, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, etc.), while others ( Mount Simeli, The Three Snake-Leaves, Lady Heinz, etc.) are less so. However, what all have in common, in Pullman's retellings, are a salutary clarity and directness. His style is conversational, simple, and straightforward, without frills and furbelows; but less is more, as Pullman proves by providing a wonderfully rich reading experience. His book is not only stylish in its simplicity but also scholarly. In addition to his elegant introduction, he concludes each tale with his own always interesting commentary and provides, as well, the tale's type (based on The Types of International Folktales, by Antti Aarne), its source, and a short list of similar stories. There are, of course, any number of English-language versions and editions of Grimm, but few are as felicitous in their telling as Pullman's. His book surely belongs on the same shelf as the very best of those that appeal to general readers of all ages. --Booklist       (Get the Book)

Far from the tree : parents, children and the search for identity

by Andrew Solomon    (Get the Book)
Solomon, who won the National Book Award for The Noonday Demon (2001), tackles daunting questions involving nature versus nurture, illness versus identity, and how they all affect parenting in his exhaustive but not exhausting exploration of what happens when children bear little resemblance to their parents. He begins by challenging the very concept of human reproduction. We do not reproduce, he asserts, spawning clones. We produce originals. And if we're really lucky, our offspring will be enough like us or our immediate forebears that we can easily love, nurture, understand, and respect them. But it's a crapshoot. More often than not, little junior will be born with a long-dormant recessive gene, or she may emerge from the womb with her very own, brand-new identifier say, deafness, physical deformity, or homosexuality. Years of interviews with families and their unique children culminate in this compassionate compendium. Solomon focuses on the creative and often desperate ways in which families manage to tear down prejudices and preconceived fears and reassemble their lives around the life of a child who alters their view of the world. Most succeed. Some don't. But the truth Solomon writes about here is as poignant as it is implacable, and he leaves us with a reinvented notion of identity and individual value. --Booklist

Winter of the world

by Ken Follett    (Get the Book)
Follett follows the bestselling Fall of Giants (2010) with the eagerly anticipated second volume of his ambitious Century Trilogy. Picking up the disparate plot strands approximately 10 years later, he introduces the next generation of the five original families American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh, respectively as it stands poised on the brink of another international catastrophe. As fascism extends its grip on Europe, the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, London is blitzed, the Soviet Union is invaded, and the lives of all the interrelated major characters are dramatically and permanently altered. Serving as participants in and witnesses to all the major events of the mid-twentieth century, their dovetailing stories provide a remarkably comprehensive overview of a rapidly evolving chain of events that will challenge and change the course of world history. In the hands of a less gifted writer, these 900-plus pages and the breadth of the subject matter might be daunting, but Follett never lets the action lag as he adeptly ties together all the sweeping economic, cultural, political, and social transformations of the entire era. High Demand Backstory: The first volume in Follett's epic Century Trilogy was a runaway bestseller. Expect immediate high demand as fans of Fall of Giants will be impatient to find out how the main characters and their extended families fare as another world war looms on the horizon. --Booklist

Churchill and seapower

by Christopher M. Bell    (Get the Book)
Historian Bell (The Royal Navy), of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, addresses a surprisingly neglected aspect of Winston Churchill's career: his attitude to sea power. Churchill's relationship to the Royal Navy was closer and more comprehensive than that of any other modern British statesman. Bell combines archival and published material to make a convincing case for Churchill's reputation as a naval strategist and a "steward of the Royal Navy" despite the criticisms of politicians, sailors, and historians (and two disastrous naval campaigns while he served as Lord of the Admiralty early in both world wars). The author shows Churchill's approach to naval power to be unsentimental and pragmatic in his views on sea power. Early faith in the navy's offensive potential was shaken by its limited achievements in WWI. Thereafter Churchill came to regard the navy's mission as predominantly defensive. His frustrated efforts in WWII to find an offensive role against a German-controlled continent led him to conclude that the navy should be maintained at the lowest level necessary to fulfill its defensive mission while offensive resources were best funneled to air power. But Churchill also met the navy's most important needs and protected its long-term interests as well as possible in the context of changing strategic requirements, concludes Bell in this illuminating study. --Publishers Weekly

The panther

by Nelson DeMille     (get the Book)
Following closely on the heels of The Lion (2010), this gripping thriller (set early in 2004) finds antiterrorist agent John Corey and his wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield, joining an investigative team in Yemen. Their stated mission: to continue looking into the suicide bombing of the USS Cole, the military vessel that was attacked by al-Qaeda in the port of Aden three-and-a-half years earlier. Their unstated mission: to bring to justice the mastermind of the Cole bombing, the man known as the Panther. As with previous Corey novels, the book balances suspense and action with humor: Corey relates the story in the first person, spicing his narrative with witty or sarcastic asides and other entertaining verbal meanderings, as though he's telling us the story at a far remove, when the tense and potentially deadly events of the mission have been tempered by time and distance. Packed as usual with memorable characters (including one who's starred in a couple of his own DeMille novels), political commentary, gritty atmosphere, and action, the book will be gobbled up by the author's many fans, but readers unfamiliar with DeMille's work (if there still are any) should be steered in its direction, too. It's a first-class thriller, regardless of whether John Corey is the reader's old friend or a new acquaintance. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: DeMille's latest will draw on both the author's sterling track record and an A-list promotion campaign to vault it onto best-seller lists. --Booklist 

Mindset : the new psychology of success

by Carol S. Dweck    (Get the Book)
In sharing her years of research on how people's beliefs influence their lives, Dweck (Columbia Univ.) hopes to help people have better lives. She focuses on what she calls "mindsets," the fixed mind-set (i.e., one's abilities are set) versus the growth mind-set (one's abilities are changeable through learning). An individual's mind-set, the author argues, coordinates with his or her beliefs about risk and effort and about the causes of success and failure. Dweck sees the fixed mind-set as typical of people who seek to validate, rather than develop, themselves; the opposite is true of the growth mind-set. In the last chapter, Dweck provides strategies to help the reader change to (and maintain) a growth mind-set. This book is at its core more self-help than scholarly. Drawing examples from education, sports, business, and relationships--and then making connections to the research--Dweck makes psychology accessible to the uninitiated. Those looking for extensive details of the research will not find them here. --Choice

Toby's room

by Pat Barker    (Get the Book)
Barker is firmly established in the realm of historical fiction due to her much-celebrated Regeneration Trilogy about Britain during WWI (Regeneration, 1991; The Eye in the Door, 1994; The Ghost Road, 1995). Although her latest novel is not in a trilogy, it does share with her recent Life Class (2008) a London art-academy setting. Again, it's wartime. The carnage in Flanders fields is graphically brought to the home front in the ravaged literally faces of returned soldiers. Art student Elinor Brooke's relationship with her brother, Toby, goes beyond usually accepted norms. When Toby is killed in battle, Elinor is obsessed with learning the details of his death. This obsession leads her on a long physical and mental journey, with the reader following along in rapt attention. As always, Barker constructs easily consumed sentences, each contributing to the sturdy, compelling story line, and although Elinor's obsession could have easily grown wearying, Barker's sympathetic treatment prevents the reader from reaching that point. --Booklist

My life in politics

Jaques Chirac     (Get the Book)
France's president from 1995 to 2007 wrestles with intractable issues amid gridlocked politics in this tense memoir. Chirac's career in center-right Gaullist parties shows just how conflicted and dysfunctional France's dual-executive system was: he was prime minister to a president of his own party who hated and undermined him (Valery Giscard d'Estaing), then to Socialist president Francois Mitterrand, who opposed him politically; during his own presidency he endured a similarly contentious "cohabitation" with Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. Through it all, he wrestled with, but scarcely resolved, problems with budgets, pensions, France's immigrants, and European integration. Chirac epitomizes French consensus politics, with its Gallic mixture of grandiosity and realism; in the book he is forever proclaiming adamant principle on, say, pension reform or Bosnia, only to retreat into prudent expediency in the face of mass strikes or military risks. Although ill-served by the off-key translation-Americans say nuclear "deterrence," not "dissuasion"-he crafts tart, vivid critiques of people and policies, including extended attacks on Israeli policy toward the Palestinians and on Bush's rush into the Iraq War by way of "a dominating and Manichean logic that favored force over law." His is a revealing, though not quite inspiring, self-portrait of an archetypal figure in a Europe that's now all but collapsed. --Publishers Weekly

Flight behavior : a novel

By Barbara Kingsolver     (Get the Book)
Drawing on both her Appalachian roots and her background in biology, Kingsolver delivers a passionate novel on the effects of global warming. Dellarobia Turnbow got pregnant in high school; now, some 11 years into her unhappy marriage, she's ready for a big change, and she thinks she's found it with a randy young telephone lineman. But on her way to a rendezvous, she is waylaid by the sight of a forest ablaze with millions of butterflies. Their usual migratory route has been disrupted, and what looks to be a stunningly beautiful view is really an ominous sign, for the Appalachian winter could prove to be the demise of the species. The phenomenon draws the whole world to Dellarobia's doorstep scientists, the media, hordes of tourists and gives her new and galvanizing insight into her poverty-stricken life on the sheep farm of her disapproving in-laws. Kingsolver, as always a fluent and eloquent writer, skillfully sets the hook of her fascinating story before launching into activist mode with more than a few pointed speeches delivered by an eminent scientist (and Kingsolver stand-in). By that time, though, readers will be well and truly smitten with feisty, funny, red-haired Dellarobia and her determined quest to widen the confines of her world. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: On the heels of the beloved author's best-selling The Lacuna (2009), which won the Orange Prize, her latest novel will receive a 500,000-copy first printing and be supported by an eight-city author tour. --Booklist

Sharing : culture and the economy in the Internet age

by Philippe Aigrain    (Get the Book)
In this creative work, Aigrain (CEO, Sopinspace--Society for Public Information Spaces) and contributor Suzanne Aigrain (Oxford Univ.) have obviously spent a great deal of time imagining what the future holds for cultural interaction in the Internet age. They describe a new model of enhanced sharing of cultural resources, offering a tremendous array of ideas for readers to digest. One consistent point is that profit-centered, concentrated markets will limit access to and exposure of ideas, artifacts, and creative works. To prevent the predicted welfare losses, the authors imagine a commons where cultural riches can be shared absent the rent seeking of agents with undue control. The arguments include methods to compensate creative contributors adequately while keeping the cost to those accessing material low. Governments would collect fees to reward producers and encourage future developments. Apparently these would not be taxes, since the revenues would be directed to specific uses and not become part of the governments' general budgets. This "non-market" solution, with its lengthy discussion of payments by consumers and rewards to producers, with an impartial umpire determining the amounts after collecting a vast quantity of relevant data, sounds much like Oskar Lange's vision of a socialist marketplace. Provocative reading for sophisticated audiences. --Choice

Into the woods : tales from the Hollows and beyond

by Kim Harrison   (Get the Book)
For the first time, all of Harrison's shorter pieces are gathered together in one volume. Several have been previously published. Two Ghosts for Sister Rachel, an early story about teenage Rachel Morgan's first encounter with Pierce, originally appeared in the anthology Holidays Are Hell (2007), and Undead in the Garden of Good and Evil, written entirely from Ivy's point of view, appeared in Dates from Hell (2006). As only the most determined readers would have tracked down all these stories, this collection should be a treat for the majority of Harrison's teen and adult fans. Most highly anticipated will be the several completely new stories, notably the novella Million Dollar Baby, about Trent and Jenks' retrieval of baby Lucy, which was only briefly alluded to in the recent Pale Demon (2011). Readers concerned about the coming end of Harrison's Hollows series should be pleased with the last section, Beyond the Hollows, four stories that show that something completely new and equally good may be on the way. A must read for Harrison fans. --Booklist

Master class : living longer, stronger, and happier

by Peter Spiers     (Get the Book)
Retirement-aged baby boomers get schooled in achieving the "Master Way of Life" by balancing four key dimensions-socializing, moving, thinking, and creating. Posed as a "road map for the next phase of your life," this model curriculum offers a holistic approach to blending these four dimensions through 31 engaging-and realistic-activities (e.g., participating in a book club, dancing, educational travel). Senior v-p of the nonprofit Road Scholar organization, Spiers thoroughly explains how each activity embodies the four key elements and offers ways to get "extra credit" by making the most out of each activity, such as recording your travels through a diary, photos, or blog. Charts and exercises assist in advancing participants through four syllabi, culminating in eventual graduation to the "Master Class." The book's curriculum format, though gimmicky at times, is always constructive and instructive. But the highest grade goes to the commentary of numerous Masters, scattered throughout each section, which emphasize how certain activities have enriched their lives. According to Spiers, the goal of the program is to lead a life of "happiness, optimism, and physical and cognitive health." Or as one Master remarks in reference to writing: "The rewards are in the activity." --Publishers Weekly

Lionel Asbo : state of England

by Martin Amis   (Get the Book)
Amis' phenomenal vim and versatility, anchoring roots in English literature, and gift for satire power this hilariously Dickensian, nerve-racking, crafty, bull's-eye tale of a monster and a mensch. Lionel, a volatile and brutal thug much feared in his destitute Liverpool neighborhood, proudly changed his last name to Asbo, the English acronym for anti-social behavior order. Loyal to blood, Lionel has taken in his orphaned teenage nephew, Desmond. Gentle, smart, bookish, and half-black, Des nimbly if fearfully navigates Lionel's wrath and psychopathic pit bulls while anxiously harboring a potentially fatal family secret. While Lionel is in and out of prison, Des goes to college, becomes a journalist, and marries. Then Lionel wins the lottery and becomes the tabloids' favorite target as he struggles to transform himself and burns through a huge sum of money with mad desperation. In a wicked twist on the rags-to-riches motif, Amis exults in mocking the cheap dreams of the lottery and the rapacious British press while affirming the toxic conflicts of class, race, and gender. Even more caustically diabolical is the way Amis toys with our trust in love. This deliciously shivery, sly, and taunting page-turner provokes a fresh assessment of the poverty of place, mind, and spirit and the wondrous blossoming of against-all-odds goodness. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With praise still in the air for Amis' last novel, The Pregnant Widow (2010), readers will flock to this rapidly devoured, fiendishly comedic, and telling fable. --Booklist

Barefoot Contessa foolproof : recipes you can trust

by Ina Garten     Get the Book
How many magazine, newspaper, and book recipes have resulted in major dining disasters, or at least less-than-optimum visual and tasty delights? Not content to rely on titles alone, nationally known cook and TV host Garten, aka the Barefoot Contessa, carefully counsels reader-chefs on turning out perfect dishes and menus every time. Each page, if not featuring a list of foolproof techniques and tips, includes all the right directions as well as photographs. Just a sampling of the ideas that make her 100 dishes work: freeze cookie dough but not already baked cookies; when a dish specifies fleur de sel, don't use kosher salt; avoid serving appetizers on Thanksgiving, but do cook in abundance, so that guests go home with leftovers. Her treats, as always are stomach pleasers: mustard and gruyere batons, lobster mac and cheese, salted caramel brownies, and cinnamon baked donuts, among others.

Mean girls at work :how to stay professional when things get personal

by Katherine Crowley Get The Book

*Starred Review* Years ago, it was called the Queen Bee Syndrome, denoting the propensity of female bosses to overdo their authority in the workplace. Now, psychotherapist-consultant team and multibook authors (including Working with You Is Killing Me, 2006) Crowley and Elster more precisely define the mean bee, segmenting bad female behaviors into seven categories: meanest of the mean, very mean, passively mean, doesn't mean to be mean, doesn't know she's mean, brings out your mean, and group mean. Not enough differentiation among these personalities, you fear? Relax; perhaps the most critical part of the book is when the authors first describe the specific variations of meanness, then detail not only particular actions but also your feelings and what to do (as well as what not to do). 

100 ways to motivate yourself : change your life forever /

by Steve Chandler  (Get The Book)

Steve Chandler helps you create an action plan for living your vision, in business and in life. It features 100 proven methods to positively change the way you think and act--methods based on feedback from the hundreds of thousands of corporate and public seminar attendees Chandler speaks to each year. The book now also includes techniques and breakthroughs he has created for individual coaching clients. 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself will help you break through the negative barriers and banish the pessimistic thoughts that are preventing you from fulfilling your lifelong goals and dreams. This edition also contains new mental and spiritual techniques that give readers more immediate access to action and results in their lives.If you're ready to finally make a change and reach your goals, Steve Chandler challenges you to turn your defeatist attitude into energetic, optimistic, enthusiastic accomplishments.

A fistful of collars : a Chet and Bernie mystery

by Spencer Quinn    (Get the Book)
In their fifth outing, Chet, the pooch narrator, and Bernie, the human PI, have a brush with fame after they agree to do babysitting duty for a notoriously difficult movie star, Thad Perry, and his cat, Brando, as a favor to the mayor, who's working hard to promote the Valley as a movie-filming destination. But both Chet and Bernie suspect something deeper is going on with Thad's cousin and personal bodyguard and the mayor's head of security (an old acquaintance from the police force), especially after the pair is found sniffing around a murder scene. Nor does Chet like the drugs he often smells on Thad (Chet did really well at the drug-sniffing part of K-9 school; well, until there was that incident with the cat . . .). Quinn's ability to get inside Chet's head continues to be what gives this series its spark. Between Chet's insightful and humorous takes on human events, the fast-paced plot, and the wealth of fascinating secondary characters, this is a fine entry in a not-to-be-missed series. --Booklist

The next always

by Nora Roberts         (Get the Book)
Beckett has no trouble whatsoever talking to women. It's just Claire who has him at a loss for words. It all began when Beckett fell hard and fast for Claire in high school, but Claire wound up marrying Beckett's best friend, Clint. Now, more than a decade later, Claire, a war widow, is back in Boonsboro, building a new life for herself and her sons as the owner of the town's bookstore. Even though renovating the local inn keeps Beckett busy, he still manages to bump into Claire at least once a day, and he still finds himself surprisingly tongue-tied. Finally, when Beckett offers Claire an early tour of the inn, it leads to an unexpected kiss. With the first impeccably written and richly emotional installment in her new contemporary romantic trilogy, Roberts delivers all the elements her readers enjoy, including a perfectly matched pair of protagonists and a plot spiced with danger, a touch of the paranormal, and deliciously tart humor. Readers will also relish the autobiographical dimension. The novel is set in Roberts' hometown, Boonsboro, Maryland, in which she owns a restored inn and is the proprietor of Turn the Page bookstore. --Booklist

The story of ain't : America, its language, and the most controversial dictionary ever published

by David Skinner     (Get the Book)
The editors of the New York Times breathed fire when they saw the word ain't in Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961). However, Skinner brushes aside the Times' outrage to recover the story of how one brave editor, Philip Gove, dared to publish a dictionary documenting how language actually worked in twentieth-century America, not a carefully trimmed guide to linguistic etiquette. Chronicling the thinking that emboldened Gove, Skinner revisits early twentieth-century America to examine the tensions separating the genteel novelist Henry James, who deplored the slovenliness of American speech, from the populist Mark Twain, who relished the lawless energy of that speech. As a work championing Twain's perspective, H. L. Mencken's 1919 The American Language receives particular attention as an overdue recognition of the generative powers that informed the unvarnished rhetoric of Lincoln and the iconoclastic fiction of Theodore Dreiser. Skinner also limns the growing lexical impact of linguistics as an empirical science, not a set of regulatory grammar rules. Schooled in such science, Gove risked the publication of a revolutionary lexicon though Skinner allows readers to hear the howls of protest that the dictionary provoked before it finally won general acceptance. A compelling reminder of the cultural significance of words and word-making. --Booklist