It’s Tuesday, you know what that means in the book world – NEW BOOKS! Here’s a selection of what we put on the shelves this morning. Blurbs provided by the books’ publishers.
HARDCOVER NONFICTION
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan
Edward Curtis was charismatic, handsome, a passionate mountaineer, and a famous photographer, the Annie Leibovitz of his time. He moved in rarefied circles, a friend to presidents, vaudeville stars, leading thinkers. And he was thirty-two years old in 1900 when he gave it all up to pursue his Great Idea: to capture on film the continent’s original inhabitants before the old ways disappeared. An Indiana Jones with a camera, Curtis spent the next three decades traveling from the Havasupai at the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the Acoma on a high mesa in New Mexico to the Salish in the rugged Northwest rain forest, documenting the stories and rituals of more than eighty tribes. Prizewinning writer Timothy Egan tells the riveting, cinematic story behind the most famous photographs in Native American history — and the driven, brilliant man who made them.
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HARDCOVER FICTION
The Hive by Charles Burns
From the creator of Black Hole (“The best graphic novel of the year.” —Time; “Burns’s masterwork.” —The New York Times Book Review), the second part of a new epic masterpiece of graphic horror in brilliant, vivid color. Much has happened since we last saw Doug, the Tintin-like hero from X’ed Out. Confessing his past to an unidentified woman, Doug struggles to recall the mysterious incident that left his life shattered, an incident that may have involved his disturbed and now-absent girlfriend, Sarah, and her menacing ex-boyfriend. Doug warily seeks answers in a nightmarish alternate world that is a distorted mirror of our own, where he is a lowly employee that carts supplies around the Hive.
Silent House by Orhan Pamuk
In a crumbling mansion in Cennethisar (formerly a fishing village, now a posh resort near Istanbul) the old widow Fatma awaits the annual summer visit of her grandchildren: Faruk, a dissipated failed historian; his sensitive leftist sister, Nilgun; and the younger grandson, Metin, a high school student drawn to the fast life of the nouveaux riches, who dreams of going to America.The widow has lived in the village for decades, ever since her husband, an idealistic young doctor, first arrived to serve the poor fishermen. Now mostly bedridden, she is attended by her faithful servant Recep, a dwarf—and the doctor’s illegitimate son. Mistress and servant share memories, and grievances, of those early years. But it is Recep’s cousin Hassan, a high school dropout and fervent right-wing nationalist, who will draw the visiting family into the growing political cataclysm, in this spellbinding novel depicting Turkey’s tumultuous century-long struggle for modernity.
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PAPERBACK NONFICTION
How to Tell If You Cat is Plotting to Kill You by The Oatmeal
Jesus Rollerblading Christ—another helping of TheOatmeal! Mrow, MOAR kitty comics. If your cat is kneading you, that’s not a sign of affection. Your cat is actually checking your internal organs for weakness. If your cat brings you a dead animal, this isn’t a gift. It’s a warning. How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You is a hilarious, brilliant offering of cat comics, facts, and instructional guides from the creative wonderland at TheOatmeal.com.
REMINDER: In order to get anything signed at our event with Matthew Inman, you must purchase a copy of How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You from BookPeople. When you buy your book, you’ll receive a wristband for the signing line.
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PAPERBACK FICTION
Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore
In July 1890, Vincent van Gogh went into a cornfield and shot himself. “Or did he?” Vincent’s friends, baker-turned-painter Lucien Lessard and bon vivant Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, have their doubts. Now they’re determined to answer the questions surrounding van Gogh’s untimely death–like who was the crooked little “color man” Vincent claimed was stalking him across France . . . and why had the painter recently become deathly afraid of a certain shade of blue? Christopher Moore cooks up a delectable confection of intrigue, passion, and art history . . . with cancan girls, baguettes, and fine French cognac thrown in for good measure.
BookPeople 