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We That Are Left: A Novel
by Clare ClarkA New York Times Editors' Choice A Washington Post &“Notable Fiction Book of 2015&” &“[A] lavishly detailed historical novel that doesn&’t just recreate the past but alters your perception of it.&”—New York Times Book Review &“As always, [Clark&’s] environments are deliciously luxe. . . With splendid breadth and depth, We That Are Left accommodates an era&’s worth of historical reverberations within the confines of its highly polished rooms.&”—Washington Post Growing up at Ellinghurst, their crumbling family estate, all three Melville children dream of escape. Headstrong Jessica yearns for the glitter and glamor of London while Phyllis longs to attend university. The adored Theo, meanwhile, eclipses everyone around him. None of the children take much notice of Oskar Grunewald, their mother&’s science-obsessed godson, who instead seeks refuge in Ellinghurst&’s enormous library. But when the cataclysm of the Great War devastates the Melvilles&’ world and reshapes their futures, Jessica and Phyllis must forge new paths in a world that no longer plays by the old rules. As Oskar is drawn reluctantly back into the Melville family fold, his life entwines with theirs in ways that will transform all of their futures forever. In We That Are Left, Clare Clark brings us a new story of an old family whose reckoning with change will haunt and resonate for many generations. &“We That Are Left is still haunting me. It offers an utterly convincing sense of period; a story that tugs at you; characters who are surprising, tender, hurt; emotions crushed, misunderstood, exploding; on every page the unresolved intensity of real life.&”—William Nicholson, author of Lovers of Amherst
The Universe And The Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty
by K. C. ColeFilled with “a thousand fascinating facts and shrewd observations (Martin Gardner, Los Angeles Times), this “beguiling and lucid book” (San Francisco Chronicle) demonstrates how the truth and beauty of everything, from relativity to rainbows, is all in the numbers. Line drawings.
From Chocolate To Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs
by Winifred Rosen Andrew T. Weil M.D.From Chocolate to Morphine is the definitive guide to drugs and drug use from one of America&’s most respected and best-known doctors. This enormously popular book — the best and most authoritative resource for unbiased information about how drugs affect the mind and the body — covers a wide range of available substances, from coffee to marijuana, antihistamines to psychedelics, steroids to smart drugs, and discusses likely effects, precautions, and alternatives. Now expanded and updated to cover such drugs as oxycontin, Ecstasy, Prozac, and ephedra and to address numerous ongoing issues, including the United States&’ war on drugs, marijuana for therapeutic use, the overuse of drugs for children diagnosed with ADHD, and more, From Chocolate to Morphine is an invaluable resource.
Beetle Busters: A Rogue Insect And The People Who Track It (Scientists in the Field)
by Loree Griffin BurnsThe Asian longhorned beetle (ALB) has made news across the United States. These beetles came to America from China, living in wood turned into shipping material. At first the beetles invaded urban areas, where hardwood trees were in limited supply—Chicago was able to declare itself ALB-free in 2006. But right now there is bad news in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Toronto—infestations have erupted in the area&’s hardwood forests, and these beetles, while bad at flying, are very good at killing trees.Clint McFarland&’s job? Stop the ALB at any cost. How do you balance the needs of residents, the impact to the environment, and an invasive species primed to wipe out entire forests? It takes the help of everyday people, such as children playing baseball at a playground, teams of beetle-sniffing dogs, and science-minded people (bug scientists and tree doctors) to eradicate this invasive pest.
Exiles In The Garden
by Ward Just"One of the most astute writers of American fiction" (New York Times Book Review) delivers the resonant story of Alec Malone, a senator’s son who rejects the family business of politics for a career as a newspaper photographer. Alec and his Swiss wife, Lucia, settle in Georgetown next door to a couple whose émigré gatherings in their garden remind Lucia of all the things Americans are not. She leaves Alec as his career founders on his refusal of an assignment to cover the Vietnam War — a slyly subversive fictional choice from Ward Just, who was himself a renowned war correspondent. At the center of the novel is Alec’s unforeseen reckoning with Lucia’s long-absent father, Andre Duran, a Czech living out the end of his life in a hostel called Goya House. Duran’s career as an adventurer and antifascist commando is everything Alec’s is not. The encounter forces Alec to confront just how different a life where things — "terrible things, terrible things" — happen is from a life where nothing much happens at all. Once again, "Ward Just writes the kind of books they say no one writes anymore: smart, well-crafted narratives — wise to the ways of the world — that use fiction to show us how we live" (Joseph Kanon, Los Angeles Times).
Popco
by Scarlett ThomasPopCo tells the story of Alice Butler??—??a subversively smart girl in our commercial-soaked world who grows from reclusive orphan to burgeoning vigilante, buttressed by mystery, codes, math, and the sense her grandparents gave her that she could change the world.Alice??—??slight introvert, crossword compositor??—??works at PopCo, a globally successful and slightly sinister toy company. Lured by their CEO to a Thought Camp out on the moors, PopCo's creatives must invent the ultimate product for teenage girls. Meanwhile, Alice receives bizarre, encrypted messages she suspects relate to her grandfather's decoding of a centuries-old manuscript that many??—??including her long-disappeared father??—??believe leads to buried treasure. Its key, she's sure, is engraved on the necklace she's been wearing since she was ten. Using the skills she learned from her grandparents and teaching us aspects of cryptanalysis, Alice discovers the source of these creepy codes. Will this lead her to the mysterious treasure or another, even more carefully guarded secret?“The code-breaking and -making heroine of [this] smart, engaging novel takes a critical view of the corporate marketing of cool . . . a captivating heroine.”??—??Publishers Weekly
Adeline: A Novel of Virginia Woolf
by Norah Vincent&“Daring . . . Vincent&’s psychological approach is intriguing.&” — USA Today &“Vincent is a sensitive recorder of a mind&’s movements as it shifts in and out of inspiration, and as it fights before submitting to despair.&” — New York Times Book Review With poetic precision and psychological acuity, Norah Vincent&’s Adeline reimagines the events that brought Woolf to the banks of the River Ouse, offering us a denouement worthy of its protaganist. Channeling Virginia and Leonard Woolf, T. S. and Vivienne Eliot, Lytton Strachey, and Dora Carrington, Vincent lays bare their genius and their blind spots, their achievements and their failings, from the inside out. And haunting every page is Adeline, the name given to Virginia Stephen at birth, which becomes the source of Virginia&’s greatest consolation, and her greatest torment. Intellectually and emotionally disarming, Adeline—a vibrant portrait of Woolf and her social circle, the storied Bloomsbury group, and a window into the darkness that both inspired and doomed them all—is a masterpiece in its own right by one of our most brilliant and daring writers.&“Skillfully rendered and emotionally insightful.&” — Publishers Weekly &“[An] electrifyingly good novel . . . by a master of discomfort.&” — New Statesman
The Russian Dreambook Of Color And Flight: A Novel
by Gina OchsnerIn a crumbling apartment building in post-Soviet Russia, there&’s a ghost who won&’t keep quiet.Mircha fell from the roof and was never properly buried, so he sticks around to heckle the living: his wife, Azade; Olga, a disillusioned translator/censor for a military newspaper; Yuri, an army veteran who always wears an aviator&’s helmet; and Tanya.Tanya carries a notebook wherever she goes, recording her observations and her dreams of finding love and escaping her job at the All-Russia All-Cosmopolitan Museum, a place which holds a fantastic and terrible collection of art knockoffs created using the tools at hand, from foam to chewing gum, Popsicle sticks to tomato juice. When the museum&’s director hears of a mysterious American group seeking to fund art in Russia, it looks like she might get her chance at a better life, if she can only convince them of the collection&’s worth. Enlisting the help of Azade, Olga and even Mircha, Tanya scrambles to save her dreams and her neighbors, and along the way discovers that love may have been waiting in her own courtyard all along.And so in Ochsner's fable-like, magical way, we see the transcendence of imagination. As Colum McCann has said: "[Ochsner] manages . . . to capture our sundry human moments and make raw and unforgettable music of them."
The Gates Of Ivory: A Novel (Emblem Editions Ser.)
by Margaret DrabbleLiz Headleand is one of London’s best-known and most prominent psychiatrists. One day she arrives at work to find a mysterious package, postmarked from Cambodia. Inside, hidden amongst scraps of paper, ancient drawings, and old postcards, she discovers pieces of human finger bones. Shocked but intrigued, she realizes the papers belong to her old friend, Stephen Cox, a playwright who moved to Cambodia to work on a script about the Khmer Rouge. Convinced Stephen is trying to send her some sort of message, Liz follows the clues in the box to the jungles of Cambodia, risking her life to find her friend. In this thrilling new adventure with the heroine of The Radiant Way and A Natural Curiosity, Margaret Drabble takes us far from the civilized, familiar streets of London, painting an "urgent, brilliant" (The Boston Globe) portrait of the tumultuous, terror-ridden landscape of Cambodia in the late twentieth century.
Dreadful Sorry (Time Travel Mysteries Ser.)
by Kathryn ReissSeventeen-year-old Molly's recurrent nightmares become waking visions after she nearly drowns at a party. Soon she's witnessing events through the eyes of a girl who lived in her father's house nearly a century before.
Airman's Odyssey: Wind, Sand and Stars; Night Flight; and Flight to Arras
by Antoine de Saint-ExupéryThree classic adventure stories, reminders of both the romance and the reality of the pioneer era of aviation: Night Flight; Wind, Sand and Stars; and Flight to Arras. Introduction by Richard Bach. Translated by Lewis Galantière and Stuart Gilbert.
I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy
by Cris BeamA cogent, gorgeous examination of empathy, illuminating the myths, the science, and the power behind this transformative emotion Empathy has become a gaping fault line in American culture. Pioneering programs aim to infuse our legal and educational systems with more empathic thinking, even as pundits argue over whether we should bother empathizing with our political opposites at all. Meanwhile, we are inundated with the buzzily termed &“empathic marketing&”—which may very well be a contradiction in terms. In I Feel You, Cris Beam carves through the noise with a revelatory exploration of how we perform empathy, how it is learned, what it can do—indeed, what empathy is in the first place. She takes us to the labs where the neural networks of compassion are being mapped, and the classrooms where children are being trained to see others&’ views. Beam visits courtrooms and prisons, asking how empathy might transform our justice system. She travels to places wracked by oppression and genocide, where reconciliation seems impossible, to report on efforts to heal society&’s deepest wounds through human connection. And finally, she turns to how we, as individuals, can foster compassion for ourselves. Brimming with the sensitive and nuanced storytelling that has made Beam one of our most respected journalists, I Feel You is an eye-opening affirmation of empathy&’s potential.
How Not To Get Rich: The Financial Misadventures of Mark Twain
by Alan Pell CrawfordA Wealthmanagement.com Best Business Book of 2017 An uproarious account of Mark Twain&’s endless attempts to strike it rich, all of which served only to empty his pockets Mark Twain&’s lifetime spans America&’s era of greatest economic growth. And Twain was an active, even giddy, participant in all the great booms and busts of his time, launching himself into one harebrained get-rich scheme after another. But far from striking it rich, the man who coined the term &“Gilded Age&” failed with comical regularity to join the ranks of plutocrats who made this period in America notorious for its wealth and excess. Instead, Twain&’s mining firm failed, despite striking real silver. He ended up somehow owing money over his 70,000 acres of inherited land. And his plan to market the mysteriously energizing coca leaves from the Amazon fizzled when no ships would sail to South America. Undaunted, Twain poured his money into the latest newfangled inventions of his time, all of which failed miserably. In Crawford&’s hilarious telling, the familiar image of Twain takes on a new and surprising dimension. Twain&’s story of financial optimism and perseverance is a kind of cracked-mirror history of American business itself—in its grandest cockeyed manifestations, its most comical lows, and its determined refusal to ever give up.
The Servants' Quarters
by Lynn FreedHaunted by phantoms of World War II and the Holocaust, young Cressida lives in terror of George Harding, who, severely disfigured, has returned from the front to recover on his family’s African estate. When Harding plucks young Cressida’s beautiful mother and family from financial ruin, establishing them in the old servants’ quarters, Cressida is swept into a life inexorably bound to his.In her new setting, she is conscripted to enliven Harding’s nephew, the hopelessly timid Edgar, to make him “wild and daring.” She takes on this task with resentful fury, leading the boy astray and, in the process, learning to manipulate the disparities of power, class, and ambition. All the while, Harding himself is watching her. And waiting.The Servants’ Quarters, a complex and sophisticated love story, evokes a vanishing world of privilege with a Pygmalion twist. It is, as Amy Tan said, “Freed’s best novel yet.”
Green Darkness: A Novel
by Anya SetonA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. Exploring themes of love, reincarnation and good vs evil, the action starts when a 1960s guru sends a troubled American woman back over 400 years into a past life to save her marriage.Strange things are afoot after English aristocrat Richard Marsdon takes his new wife Celia, an American heiress, to his family home in Sussex. Richard acts out of character, and Celia is suffering a debilitating emotional breakdown.A friend of Celia’s mother, a wise, Hindu mystic, realizes the couple is haunted by an event from their past lives, and the only way to repair the damage is to send Celia back in time. The heiress journeys back almost four hundred years to the reign of Edward VI and her former life as the servant girl Celia de Bohun—and her doomed love affair with the chaplain Stephen Marsdon. Although Celia and Stephen can’t escape the horrifying consequences of their love, fate—and time—offer them another chance for redemption.
The Nature Of Monsters: A Novel
by Clare Clark1666: The Great Fire of London sweeps through the streets and a heavily pregnant woman flees the flames. A few months later she gives birth to a child disfigured by a red birthmark. 1718: Sixteen-year-old Eliza Tally sees the gleaming dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral rising above a rebuilt city. She arrives as an apothecary’s maid, a position hastily arranged to shield the father of her unborn child from scandal. But why is the apothecary so eager to welcome her when he already has a maid, a half-wit named Mary? Why is Eliza never allowed to look her veiled master in the face or go into the study where he pursues his experiments? It is only on her visits to the Huguenot bookseller who supplies her master’s scientific tomes that she realizes the nature of his obsession. And she knows she has to act to save not just the child but Mary and herself. This ebook includes a sample chapter of BEAUTIFUL LIES.
Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays (Complete Orwell Ser.)
by George Orwell George PackerGeorge Orwell was first and foremost an essayist, producing throughout his life an extraordinary array of short nonfiction that reflected--and illuminated--the fraught times in which he lived. "As soon as he began to write something," comments George Packer in his foreword, "it was as natural for Orwell to propose, generalize, qualify, argue, judge--in short, to think--as it was for Yeats to versify or Dickens to invent."Facing Unpleasant Facts charts Orwell's development as a master of the narrative-essay form and unites such classics as "Shooting an Elephant" with lesser-known journalism and passages from his wartime diary. Whether detailing the horrors of Orwell's boyhood in an English boarding school or bringing to life the sights, sounds, and smells of the Spanish Civil War, these essays weave together the personal and the political in an unmistakable style that is at once plainspoken and brilliantly complex.
Just Grace, Star On Stage (The Just Grace Series #9)
by Charise Mericle HarperIn a starred review, Booklist called the Just Grace series “hilarious” and said, “Give this to . . . anyone looking for a funny book.” Grace is a curious and well-meaning third-grader who occasionally gets into a little bit of trouble. This time, her class is putting on a play, and Grace is determined to be the star! But things don’t work out quite like she planned, and Marta gets the role. Grace is jealous at first, but soon realizes there’s more than one way to shine on stage. This is an act that fans of Judy Moody and Clementine surely won’t want to miss!
The Last Canyon: A Novel
by John Vernon“Both gritty and sublime” (Seattle Times), The Last Canyon tells the story of John Wesley Powell’s 1869 voyage of exploration through the Grand Canyon, the last great expedition of discovery in United States history. In this vivid novel, John Vernon intertwines two stories – that of Powell and his crew, and that of a band of Paiute Indians, known as the Shivwits, who lived on the north rim of the canyon. As the novel moves inexorably toward a violent encounter between the two groups, Vernon deftly leads us into perilous geographical and emotional territory. Powell’s adventure is a story of triumph, hardship, bravery, and ultimate loss.
In The Loyal Mountains: Stories
by Rick BassRick Bass's recent trio of novellas, Platte River, was hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as "a major step in [his] climb to the top echelon of American fiction writers." Now, with this dazzling new collection, Bass establishes himself as a master of the short story. These tales embrace vibrant images of human life and exuberant explorations of the natural world. In the title story, a man remembers his youth in the Texas hill country when he participated in his uncle's raucous escapades, which have taken new shape and meaning by what has happened since. Although his work is grounded in reality, Bass's stories acquire fantastic proportions: enormous pigs charge through the streets and root beneath houses; a narrator meets a woman who runs up and down mountains; two wild boys converge deep in the woods to joust. Each of these ten stories is a mythical narrative celebrating the tentative, moving relationship between people and their environment.
A Day In The Life Of A Smiling Woman: Complete Short Stories
by Margaret Drabble Jose Francisco FernandezMargaret Drabble’s novels have illuminated the past fifty years, especially the changing lives of women, like no others. Yet her short fiction has its own unique brilliance. Her penetrating evocations of character and place, her wide-ranging curiosity, her sense of irony—all are on display here, in stories that explore marriage, female friendships, the English tourist abroad, love affairs with houses, peace demonstrations, gin and tonics, cultural TV programs; in stories that are perceptive, sharp, and funny. An introduction by the Spanish academic José Fernández places the stories in the context of her life and her novels. This collection is a wonderful recapitulation of a masterly career.
Five Seasons: A Novel
by A. B. YehoshuaIn the autumn, Molkho's wife dies and his years of loving attention are ended. But his newfound freedom is filled with the erotic fantasies of a man who must fall in love. Winter sees him away to the operas of Berlin and a comic tryst with a legal advisor who has a sprained ankle. Spring takes him to Galilee and an underage Indian girl. Jerusalem in the summer presents him with an offer from an old classmate to seduce his infertile wife. And the next autumn it is Nina (if only they spoke the same language!), whose yearning for her Russian home leads Molkho back to life.Five Seasons is a finely nuanced, unabashedly realistic novel that provides immense reading pleasure.
Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (NONE)
by Nick KotzOpposites in almost every way, mortally suspicious of each other at first, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr., were thrust together in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Both men sensed a historic opportunity and began a delicate dance of accommodation that moved them, and the entire nation, toward the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources -- Johnson's taped telephone conversations, voluminous FBI wiretap logs, previously secret communications between the FBI and the president -- Nick Kotz gives us a dramatic narrative, rich in dialogue, that presents this momentous period with thrilling immediacy. Judgment Days offers needed perspective on a presidency too often linked solely to the tragedy of Vietnam. We watch Johnson applying the arm-twisting tactics that made him a legend in the Senate, and we follow King as he keeps the pressure on in the South through protest and passive resistance. King's pragmatism and strategic leadership and Johnson's deeply held commitment to a just society shaped the character of their alliance. Kotz traces the inexorable convergence of their paths to an intense joint effort that made civil rights a legislative reality at last, despite FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's vicious whispering campaign to destroy King. Judgment Days also reveals how this spirit of teamwork disintegrated. The two leaders parted bitterly over King's opposition to the Vietnam War. In this first full account of the working relationship between Johnson and King, Kotz offers a detailed, surprising account that significantly enriches our understanding of both men and their time.
Secrets Of The Southern Table: A Food Lover's Tour of the Global South
by Virginia WillisRecipes and stories of the modern South In Secrets of the Southern Table, award-winning chef and cookbook author Virginia Willis takes you on a tour of today's South—a region rich in history and cultural diversity. With her signature charm and wit, Virginia shares many well-known Southern recipes like Pimento Cheese Tomato Herb Pie and "Cathead" Biscuits, but also some surprising revelations drawn from the area's many global influences, like Catfish Tacos with Avocado Crema, Mississippi-Style Char Siu Pork Tenderloin, and Greek Okra and Tomatoes. In addition to the recipes, Virginia profiles some of the diverse chefs, farmers, and other culinary influencers who are shaping contemporary Southern cuisine. Together, these stories and the delicious recipes that accompany them celebrate the rich and ever-evolving heritage of Southern cooking.
The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men
by Eric LichtblauRead the history behind the series THE HUNTERS (starring Al Pacino) in this &“captivating book rooted in first-rate research&” (New York Times Book Review) that tells the true story of how America became home to thousands of Nazi war criminals. For the first time, once-secret government records and interviews tell the full story of the thousands of Nazis—from concentration camp guards to high-level officers in the Third Reich—who came to the United States after World War II and quietly settled into new lives. Many gained entry on their own as self-styled war &“refugees.&” But some had help from the U.S. government. The CIA, the FBI, and the military all put Hitler&’s minions to work as spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers, whitewashing their histories. Only years after their arrival did private sleuths and government prosecutors begin trying to identify the hidden Nazis. Now, relying on a trove of newly disclosed documents and scores of interviews, Eric Lichtblau reveals this shocking, shameful, and little-known chapter of postwar history. New York Times bestseller — Espionage category &“Disturbing.&” — Salon &“Engaging.&” — Chicago Tribune &“A gripping chronicle.&” — Times of Israel &“Riveting . . . An important, fascinating read.&” — Jewish Book Council