New Releases

Looking for a new book to read? HOLY COW! This is your lucky day! Take a look at what’s hot off the presses and on the shelves as of today:

 

HARDCOVER FICTION

Faith Bass Darling’s Last Garage Sale by Lynda Rutledge

On the last day of the millennium, sassy Faith Bass Darling decides to have a garage sale. Why is the richest lady in Bass, Texas, a recluse for twenty years, suddenly selling off her worldly possessions?As the townspeople grab up the heirlooms, and the antiques reveal their own secret stories, a cast of characters appears to witness the sale or try to stop it. Before the day is over, they’ll all examine their roles in the Bass family saga, as well as some of life’s most imponderable questions: Do our possessions possess us? What are we without our memories? Is there life after death or second chances here on earth? And is Faith “really “selling that Tiffany lamp for $1?

Lynda Rutledge will be here at BookPeople in conversation with Cyndi Hughes about this new book on Monday, April 30, 7p!

Helen Keller in Love by Rosie Sultan

Helen Keller has long been a towering figure in the pantheon of world heroines. Yet the enduring portrait of her in the popular imagination is The Miracle Worker, which ends when Helen is seven years old. Rosie Sultan’s debut novel imagines a part of Keller’s life she rarely spoke of or wrote about: the man she once loved. When Helen is in her thirties and Annie Sullivan is diagnosed with tuberculosis, a young man steps in as a private secretary. Peter Fagan opens a new world to Helen, and their sensual interactions—signing and lip-reading with hands and fingers—quickly set in motion a liberating, passionate, and clandestine affair.

HHhH by Lauren Binet; translated by Sam Taylor

HHhH: “Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich”, or “Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich”. The most dangerous man in Hitler’s cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the “Butcher of Prague.” With his cold Aryan features and implacable cruelty, Heydrich seemed indestructible—until two men, a Slovak and a Czech recruited by the British secret service, killed him in broad daylight on a bustling street in Prague, and thus changed the course of History. A seemingly effortlessly blend of historical truth, personal memory, and Laurent Binet’s remarkable imagination, HHhH—an international bestseller and winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman—is a work at once thrilling and intellectually engrossing, a fast-paced novel of the Second World War that is also a profound meditation on the nature of writing and the debt we owe to history.

The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller; translated by Philip Boehm

It was an icy morning in January 1945 when the patrol came for seventeen-year-old Leo Auberg to deport him to a camp in the Soviet Union. Leo would spend the next five years in a coke processing plant, shoveling coal, lugging bricks, mixing mortar, and battling the relentless calculus of hunger that governed the labor colony: one shovel load of coal is worth one gram of bread. Müller has distilled Leo’s struggle into words of breathtaking intensity that take us on a journey far beyond the Gulag and into the depths of one man’s soul.

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HARDCOVER NONFICTION

Farther Away: Essays by Jonathan Franzen

In Farther Away, which gathers together essays and speeches written mostly in the past five years, Franzen returns with renewed vigor to the themes, both human and literary, that have long preoccupied him. Whether recounting his violent encounter with bird poachers in Cyprus, examining his mixed feelings about the suicide of his friend and rival David Foster Wallace, or offering a moving and witty take on the ways that technology has changed how people express their love, these pieces deliver on Franzen’s implicit promise to conceal nothing.

Lots of Candles: Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen

In this irresistible memoir, the New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Anna Quindlen writes about looking back and ahead—and celebrating it all—as she considers marriage, girlfriends, our mothers, faith, loss, all the stuff in our closets, and more. As she did in her beloved New York Times columns, and in A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Quindlen says for us here what we may wish we could have said ourselves as she talks about marriage, girlfriends, parenting, our bodies and more.

After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family–1968 to the Present by J. Randy Taraborrelli

For more than half a century, Americans have been captivated by the Kennedys – their joy and heartbreak, tragedy and triumph, the dark side and the remarkable achievements. In this ambitious and sweeping account, Taraborelli continues the family chronicle begun with his bestselling Jackie, Ethel, Joan and provides a behind-the-scenes look at the years “after Camelot.”

The Flavor Thesaurus: Pairings, Recipes and Ideas for the Creative Cook 
by Niki Segnit

Niki Segnit’s essential culinary reference book is now available with an award-winning, internationally acclaimed design. As appealing to the novice cook as to the experienced professional, it will immeasurably improve your cooking—and it’s the sort of book that might keep you up at night reading. Beautiful, entertaining, and exhaustively researched, this is a globetrotting collection of flavor pairings as told by a writer with a discerning palette and an entertaining, original voice.

Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War by Madeline Albright

Before Madeleine Albright turned twelve, her life was shaken by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia–the country where she was born–the Battle of Britain, the near total destruction of European Jewry, the Allied victory in World War II, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War. Albright’s experiences, and those of her family, provide a lens through which to view the most tumultuous dozen years in modern history. Drawing on her memory, her parents’ written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and newly available documents, Albright recounts a tale that is by turns harrowing and inspiring.

Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow

Leonard Mlodinow, the best-selling author of The Drunkard’s Walk and coauthor of The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking), gives us a startling and eye-opening examination of how the unconscious mind shapes our experience of the world and how, for instance, we often misperceive our relationships with family, friends, and business associates, misunderstand the reasons for our investment decisions, and misremember important events.

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PAPERBACK FICTION

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

“The Art of Fielding is mere baseball fiction the way Moby Dick is just a fish story” (Nicholas Dawidoff). It is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment–to oneself and to others. At Westish College, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league until a routine throw goes disastrously off course. In the aftermath of his error, the fates of five people are upended. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets.

Salvage the Bones byJesmyn Ward

Winner of the 2011 National Book Award. A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch’s father is growing concerned. As the twelve days that make up the novel’s framework yield to their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family-motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce-pulls itself up to face another day. A big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bones is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.

Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

Bethia Mayfield is a restless and curious young woman growing up in Martha’s vineyard in the 1660s amid a small band of pioneering English Puritans. At age twelve, she meets Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a secret bond that draws each into the alien world of the other. Bethia’s father is a Calvinist minister who seeks to convert the native Wampanoag, and Caleb becomes a prize in the contest between old ways and new, eventually becoming the first Native American graduate of Harvard College. Inspired by a true story and narrated by the irresistible Bethia, Caleb’s Crossing brilliantly captures the triumphs and turmoil of two brave, openhearted spirits who risk everything in a search for knowledge at a time of superstition and ignorance.

Sound by T. M. Wolf

Built on musical notation and modeled after hip-hop beats, an innovative first novel set on the New Jersey shore among neon-lit arcades, riot-haunted blocks, and dilapidated boatyards. Sound is the story of a young man who drops out of graduate school and returns to his hometown on the New Jersey shore, only to find that home is not what he remembers it to be. Loud with the sounds of thumping cars, riot-haunted blocks, and amusement parks, this first novel from T. M. Wolf takes the reader into uncharted territory. Sound braves an entirely new way to tell a poignant story about being young and searching for love and for home.

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PAPERBACK NONFICTION

All Marketers Are Liars: The Underground Classic That Explains How Marketing Really Works–And Why Authenticity Is the Best Marketing of All by Seth Godin

The new rule of marketing is that it doesn’t matter if something is actually better or faster or more efficient. What matters is whether consumers believe the story. Godin teaches readers to create a story that fits the consumer’s world view, a story they will intuitively embrace and share with friends.

The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good by David J. Linden

In this work, a Johns Hopkins neuroscientist takes a look at the neurobiology of pleasure–and how pleasures can become addictions. Linden combines cutting-edge science with entertaining anecdotes to illuminate the source of the behaviors that can lead us to ecstasy but that can easily become compulsive.

Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time by Mark Adams

In 1911, Hiram Bingham III climbed into the Andes Mountains of Peru and “discovered” Machu Picchu. While history has recast Bingham as a villain who stole both priceless artifacts and credit for finding the great archeological site, Mark Adams set out to retrace the explorer’s perilous path in search of the truth—except he’d written about adventure far more than he’d actually lived it. In fact, he’d never even slept in a tent. Turn Right at Machu Picchu is Adams’ fascinating and funny account of his journey through some of the world’s most majestic, historic, and remote landscapes guided only by a hard-as-nails Australian survivalist and one nagging question: Just what was Machu Picchu?