HARDCOVER FICTION
Matthew’s pick of the day and Top Shelf for August: Tigerman by Nick Harkaway
“In that Tigerman is filled with gentle wit and quiet restraint, it is a wonderful display of British genre fiction. In that Tigerman often defies categorization and eventually abolishes all restraint with makeshift explosives, it is a Nick Harkaway novel through and through.” Read Matthew’s full review!
Julie’s pick of the day: Lucky Us by Amy Bloom
“I read this book in under 48 hours, stopping only to go to work. Amy Bloom spins a non-stop tale of the lives of two sisters as they move from Detroit to Hollywood to New York. Old Hollywood, World War II, love and lust and family and forgiveness – Amy Bloom is a natural, masterful storyteller who will move you, make you laugh, and pin you to your seat until you’re done. Your summer will not be complete until you’ve read this book.” Amy Bloom will be reading and signing on 8/11 at 7PM! More info here.
Behind the Shattered Glass by Tasha Alexander
Alexander Anglemore Park is the ancestral home of Lady Emily Hargreave’s husband Colin. But the stately calm of country life is destroyed when their neighbor, the Marquess of Montagu, bursts through the French doors from the garden and falls down dead in front of the shocked gathering. But who has a motive for murdering the young aristocrat? The lovely cousin who was threatened by his engagement, the Oxford friend he falsely accused of cheating, the scheming vicar’s daughter he shamelessly seduced or the relative no one knew existed who appears to claim the Montagu title? Who is the mysterious woman seen walking with him moments before he was brutally attacked?
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a crossroads: Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline’s youngest. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn’t be, with twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.
PAPERBACK FICTION
The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch
With what should have been the greatest heist of their career gone spectacularly sour, Locke and his trusted partner, Jean, have barely escaped with their lives. Or at least Jean has. But Locke is slowly succumbing to a deadly poison that no alchemist or physiker can cure. Yet just as the end is near, a mysterious Bondsmage offers Locke an opportunity that will either save him or finish him off once and for all…
Death Will Have Your Eyes by James Sallis
David (as he’s currently known) was a member of an elite corps of spies trained during the Cold War. For almost a decade he has been out of the game, working as a sculptor. Then a phone call in the middle of the night awakens him: the only other survivor from that elite corps has gone rogue. David is tasked with stopping him. What ensues is an existential cat-and-mouse game played out across the American landscape. Both a suspenseful novel of pursuit and a thematically rich exploration of the mind of a spy, Death Will Have Your Eyes is a contemporary classic of the espionage genre.
The Madmen of Benghazi by Gérard de Villiers
When terrorists try to shoot down a plane carrying Libyan prince Ibrahim al-Senussi, it is clear that someone wants him dead. But the CIA has its own plot for the prince: Now that Qaddafi has been overthrown, al-Senussi is their best bet to set up a constitutional monarchy and stem the Islamist tide in Libya. The CIA, which needs Malko as much as he needs them, sends the Austrian aristocrat to Cairo to learn more about al-Senussi’s plans by seducing his companion, a ravishing British model. This mission is enormously appealing, but also proves enormously dangerous, as the same madman of God who is trying to kill al-Senussi also takes aim at Malko.
HARDCOVER NONFICTION
The Nixon Tapes by Douglas Brinkley & Luke A. Nichter
The Nixon Tapes, with annotations and commentary by Nichter and Professor Douglas Brinkley, offers a selection of fascinating scenes from the year Nixon opened relations with China, negotiated the SALT I arms agreement with the Soviet Union, and won a landslide reelection victory. All the while, the growing shadow of Watergate and Nixon’s political downfall crept ever closer. The Nixon Tapes provides a unique glimpse into a flawed president’s hubris, paranoia, and political genius.
8/13 at 7PM, Douglas and Luke will be speaking and signing in-store!
Joe’s pick of the day: A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre
“Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five spy ring were the direct inspiration for John Le Carre’s masterpiece novel TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY. Ben MacIntyre (author of DOUBLE CROSS) revisits this oft visited tale, fousing on Philby’s betrayal of he supposedly closest friends, Nicholas Elliot (the partial inspiration for Le Carre’s George Smiley) and the CIA Counter-Intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton. This is an utterly fascinating book about the nature of identity and is required reading for any and all fans of espionage fiction and history.”
PAPERBACK NONFICTION
The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan
The century since the end of the Napoleonic wars had been the most peaceful era Europe had known since the fall of the Roman Empire. In the first years of the twentieth century, Europe believed it was marching to a golden, happy, and prosperous future. But instead, complex personalities and rivalries, colonialism and ethnic nationalisms, and shifting alliances helped to bring about the failure of the long peace and the outbreak of a war that transformed Europe and the world. Taut, suspenseful, and impossible to put down, The War That Ended Peace is also a wise cautionary reminder of how wars happen in spite of the near-universal desire to keep the peace. Destined to become a classic in the tradition of Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August, The War That Ended Peace enriches our understanding of one of the defining periods and events of the twentieth century.
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived, adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.
The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber
Cullen’s murderous career in the world’s most trusted profession spanned sixteen years and nine hospitals across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. When, in March of 2006, Charles Cullen was marched from his final sentencing in an Allentown, Pennsylvania, courthouse into a waiting police van, it seemed certain that the chilling secrets of his life, career, and capture would disappear with him. Now, in a riveting piece of investigative journalism nearly ten years in the making, journalist Charles Graeber presents the whole story for the first time. Based on hundreds of pages of previously unseen police records, interviews, wire-tap recordings and videotapes, as well as exclusive jailhouse conversations with Cullen himself and the confidential informant who helped bring him down, The Good Nurse weaves an urgent, terrifying tale of murder, friendship, and betrayal.
GRAPHIC NOVELS
The Secret Files of Dr. Drew by Jerry Grandenetti, Marilyn Mercer, Abe Kanegson, and Will Eisner
In 1949 at Eisner Studios, three of Will Eisner’s most talented “ghosts” created the remarkable horror comic strip featuring Dr. Desmond Drew, a paranormal investigator and “supernatural Sherlock Holmes.” Gorgeously drawn by future Creepy contributor Jerry Grandenetti and written in a gripping pulp style by Marilyn Mercer, these thirteen chilling stories have been collected and digitally restored while retaining the exquisite design and artwork that characterized the output of the Eisner studio. This collection of pre-code gothic horror stories delivers spooks, scares, and classic beauty!
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