Tuesday comes bearing gifts, and this week they’re plentiful. As always the blurbs are provided by the book’s publishers.
HARDCOVER FICTION
Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe
As a police launch speeds across Miami’s Biscayne Bay-with officer Nestor Camacho on board-Tom Wolfe is off and running. Into the feverous landscape of the city. Based on the same sort of detailed, on-scene, high-energy reporting that powered Tom Wolfe’s previous bestselling novels, BACK TO BLOOD is another brilliant, spot-on, scrupulous, and often hilarious reckoning with our times.
The Elephant Keeper’s Children by Peter Hoeg
Told from the precocious perspective of fourteen-year-old Peter, The Elephant Keepers’ Children is about three siblings and how they deal with life alongside their eccentric parents. Peter’s father is a vicar, his mother is an artisan, and both are equally and profoundly devout. The family lives on the (fictional) island of Finø, where people of all religious faiths coexist peacefully. Yet, nothing is at it seems.
The Racketeer by John Grisham
Given the importance of what they do, and the controversies that often surround them, and the violent people they sometimes confront, it is remarkable that in the history of this country only four active federal judges have been murdered. Judge Raymond Fogletree just became number five. His body was found in the basement of a lakeside cabin he had built himself and frequently used on weekends. When he did not show up for a trial on Monday morning, his law clerks panicked, called the FBI, and in due course the agents found the crime scene. There was no forced entry, no struggle, just two dead bodies—Judge Fogletree and his young secretary.
PAPERBACK FICTION
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
Joe Spork fixes clocks. He has turned his back on his father’s legacy as one of London’s flashiest and most powerful gangsters and aims to live a quiet life. Edie Banister retired long ago from her career as a British secret agent. She spends her days with a cantankerous old pug for company. That is, until Joe repairs a particularly unusual clockwork mechanism, inadvertently triggering a 1950s doomsday machine.
HARDCOVER NON-FICTION
Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page by Brad Tolinski
Based on extensive interviews conducted with the guitarist/producer over the past 20 years, Light & Shade encompasses Page’s entire career, beginning with his early years as England’s top session guitarist when he worked with artists ranging from Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, and Burt Bacharach to the Kinks, The Who, and Eric Clapton. Page speaks frankly about his decadent yet immensely creative years in Led Zeppelin, his synergistic relationships with band members Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones, and his notable post-Zeppelin pursuits.
Muck City by Bryan Mealer
The loamy black “muck” that surrounds Belle Glade, Florida once built an empire for Big Sugar and provided much of the nation’s vegetables. Many of these were children who honed their skills along the field rows and started one of the most legendary football programs in America. The industry that gave rise to the town and its team also spawned the chronic poverty, teeming migrant ghettos, and violence that cripples futures before they can ever begin. Muck City tells the story of quarterback Mario Rowley, whose dream is to win a championship for his deceased parents and quiet the ghosts that haunt him; head coach Jessie Hester, the town’s first NFL star, who returns home to “win kids, not championships”; and Jonteria Willliams, who must build her dream of becoming a doctor in one of the poorest high schools in the nation.
***Bryan Mealer reads from Muck City here at BookPeople on Monday, November 5 at 7pm.
The Onion Book of Known Knowledge by The Onion
Are you a witless cretin with no reason to live? Would you like to know more about every piece of knowledge ever? Do you have cash? Then congratulations, because just in time for the death of the print industry as we know it comes the final book ever published, and the only one you will ever need: The Onion‘s compendium of all things known.
What Are You Looking At? by Will Gompertz
For skeptics, art lovers, and the millions of us who visit art galleries every year—and are confused—What Are You Looking At? by former director of London’s Tate Gallery Will Gompertz is a wonderfully lively, accessible narrative history of Modern Art, from Impressionism to the present day.
Why I Left Goldman Sacs by Greg Smith
On March 14, 2012, more than three million people read Greg Smith’s bombshell Op-Ed in the New York Times titled “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs.” The column immediately went viral, became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter, and drew passionate responses from former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, legendary General Electric CEO Jack Welch, and New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg. Mostly, though, it hit a nerve among the general public who question the role of Wall Street in society — and the callous “take-the-money-and-run” mentality that brought the world economy to its knees a few short years ago. Smith now picks up where his Op-Ed left off.
KIDS FICTION
Who Could That Be at This Hour? by Lemony Snicket
In a fading town, far from anyone he knew or trusted, a young Lemony Snicket began his apprenticeship in an organization nobody knows about. Now he has written an account that should not be published, in four volumes that shouldn’t be read. This is the first volume.
We’ve gotten a tip that Lemony Snicket will here Nov 1o at 4pm. There is sure to be lots of surprises with a character like him around, come join the fun (but tell no one)!
BookPeople 
Angelmaker!