New Books! 9/29/15

New in Hardcover

Gold Fame Citrus: A Novel by Claire Vaye Watkins

We’ve been eagerly anticipating this novel since we first sped through Watkins’s multi-award winning, highly acclaimed first collection of stories, Battleborn. In a surreal, phantasmagoric version of southern California – ravaged by drought, its aquifers drained, facing the spread of an unrelenting desert – two lovers build a life in a strange new landscape. Eerie, dystopic, and all too real, Gold Fame Citrus explores the myths we believe about others and tell about ourselves, and the shape of hope in a precarious future that may be our own.

Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt by Kristin Hersh

“This is an amazing memoir from the bestselling author of Rat Girl and founder of the band Throwing Muses. It paints a beautiful portrait of musician Vic Chesnutt, his unique friendship with the author, and the sorrowful broken darkness they each deal with. The language is warm, intimate and poetic; it’s like On The Road and Sylvia Plath had a baby. It’s so gorgeous it actually hurts to read. I have not been so moved by a piece of art, any art, in years. Even with the inevitable tragic ending, Hersh keeps you hanging on with her delicate and sublime prose. You know you are circling a vortex but the water is so perfect you don’t care. This story aches, laughs, stuns, and pulls you into it like a siren song. You will put it down and want more of both Chesnutt and Hersh, and feel all the more brokenhearted at the enormity of the loss.”

— Bosco

A Song of Shadows: A Charlie Parker Thriller by John Connolly (MysterPeople Staff Pick!)

Still recovering from his life-threatening wounds, private detective Charlie Parker has retreated to the small Maine town of Boreas to regain his strength. There he befriends a widow named Ruth Winter and her young daughter, Amanda. But Ruth has her secrets. Old atrocities are about to be unearthed, and old sinners will kill to hide their sins. Now Parker is about to risk his life to defend a woman he barely knows, one who fears him almost as much as she fears those who are coming for her. His enemies believe him to be vulnerable. Fearful. Solitary. But they are wrong. Parker is far from afraid, and far from alone. For something is emerging from the shadows . . .

In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom by Yeonmi Park

Yeonmi Park’s family was loving and close-knit, but life in North Korea was practically medieval. Park would regularly go without food and was made to believe that Kim Jong Il, the country’s dictator, could read her mind. After her father was imprisoned and tortured by the regime for trading on the black-market, a risk he took in order to provide for his wife and two young daughters, Yeonmi and her family were branded as criminals and forced to the cruel margins of North Korean society. This is the story of their escape.

The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass by Jim Butcher

Bestselling author of The Dresden Files conjures up a new series set in a fantastic world of noble families, steam-powered technology, and magic-wielding warriors. Since time immemorial, the Spires have sheltered humanity, towering for miles over the mist-shrouded surface of the world. Within their halls, aristocratic houses have ruled for generations, developing scientific marvels, fostering trade alliances, and building fleets of airships to keep the peace. But humanity’s ancient enemy, silent for more than ten thousand years, has begun to stir once more. And death will follow in its wake.

The Life and Love of the Sea by Lewis Blackwell

Showcasing cutting-edge underwater photography from the world s leading marine and nature photographers, The Life & Love of the Sea is a breathtaking visual tour of the ocean’s great diversity. Readers will experience land meeting sea with images of dramatic coastlines, barrier reefs, and island chains, as well as the spectacular power of the ocean through a stunning collection of wave photographs. Offering an extensive survey of the ocean s many fascinating inhabitants, Blackwell presents incredible images of everything from whales to manta rays to seals to endless schools of fish to the creatures that reside in the deepest recesses of the ocean floor. The book also makes available bonus footage via a scannable QR code from multi-award-winning underwater cameraman Steven Hathaway.

After You by JoJo Moyes

When one story ends, another begins. After You is the charming sequel to Me Before You. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. After an extraordinary accident, Lou’s body heals, but she knows that she needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. For Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love again, with all the risks that brings.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price–and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone…
A convict with a thirst for revenge.
A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager.
A runaway with a privileged past.
A spy known as the Wraith.
A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums.
A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes.
Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction–if they don’t kill each other first.

I’ll Never Write My Memoirs by Grace Joins

Legendary influential performer Grace Jones offers a revealing account of her spectacular career and turbulent life, charting the development of a persona that has made her one of the world’s most recognizable artists. As a singer, model, and actress–a deluxe triple threat–Grace has consistently been an extreme, challenging presence in the entertainment world since her emergence as an international model in the 1970s. Celebrated for her audacious talent and trailblazing style, Grace became one of the most unforgettable, free-spirited characters to emerge from the historic Studio 54, recording glittering disco classics such as “I Need a Man” and “La Vie en Rose.” Her provocative shows in underground New York nightclubs saw her hailed as a disco queen, gay icon, and gender defying iconoclast.

Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist by Niall Ferguson

No American statesman has been as revered or as reviled as Henry Kissinger. Once hailed as Super K the indispensable man whose advice has been sought by every president from Kennedy to Obama he has also been hounded by conspiracy theorists, scouring his every telcon for evidence of Machiavellian malfeasance. Yet as Niall Ferguson shows in this magisterial two-volume biography, drawing not only on Kissinger s hitherto closed private papers but also on documents from more than a hundred archives around the world, the idea of Kissinger as the ruthless arch-realist is based on a profound misunderstanding.

The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

“Margaret Atwood’s new novel, The Heart Goes Last, is a strange roller coaster of a story, taking us through gritty dystopian futures, 1950s-style suburbias, dank prison systems, plastic entertainments, and throughout, the joy and subsequent doubt of human connection and love. I once read that true horror lies not in the unknown, but in the distortion of the familiar, and this is Atwood’s true gift. She has the ability to twist reality to its terrifyingly logical conclusions, creating surreal, dissociative worlds that seem strangely like mirror images of our own. In addition, she is able to anchor these worlds in true human emotion and experience, and this is what drew me to The Heart Goes Last. More than a dystopian landscape, this novel explores the ache of love, the heartbreak and doubt that come with not knowing the true mind of those closest to us. And these familiar fears of ours, set in a context just enough removed from our lives to see their troubles a bit more clearly, is where Atwood’s talent truly lies.”
— Emily

My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life by Ruth Reichl

In the fall of 2009, the food world was rocked when Gourmet magazine was abruptly shuttered by its parent company. No one was more stunned by this unexpected turn of events than its beloved editor in chief, Ruth Reichl, who suddenly faced an uncertain professional future. As she struggled to process what had seemed unthinkable, Reichl turned to the one place that had always provided sanctuary. I did what I always do when I’m confused, lonely, or frightened, she writes. I disappeared into the kitchen. My Kitchen Year follows the change of seasons and Reichl’s emotions as she slowly heals through the simple pleasures of cooking. While working 24/7, Reichl would throw quick meals together for her family and friends. Now she has the time to rediscover what cooking meant to her. Over the course of this challenging year, each dish Reichl prepares becomes a kind of stepping stone to finding joy again in ordinary things.

New in Paperback

Night Blindness by Susan Strecker (speaking & signing in our store 10/9 at 7PM!)

A future as bright as the stars above the Connecticut shore lay before Jensen Reilly and her high school sweetheart, Ryder, until the terrible events of an October night left Jensen running from her family and her first love. Over the years that followed, Jensen buried her painful past and created a new life far away from the unbearable secret of that night. But when she returns to her childhood home for the first time in thirteen years, and the memories of her old life come flooding back along with the people she’s tried to escape.

So, Anyway… by John Cleese

John Cleese’s huge comedic influence has stretched across generations; his sharp irreverent eye and the unique brand of physical comedy he perfected with Monty Python, on Fawlty Towers, and beyond now seem written into comedy’s DNA. In this rollicking memoir, So, Anyway…, Cleese takes readers on a Grand Tour of his ascent in the entertainment world, from his humble beginnings in a sleepy English town and his early comedic days at Cambridge University (with future Python partner Graham Chapman), to the founding of the landmark comedy troupe that would propel him to worldwide renown.

#Girlboss by Sophia Amoruso

In the New York Times bestseller that the Washington Post called “Lean In for misfits,” Sophia Amoruso shares how she went from dumpster diving to founding one of the fastest-growing retailers in the world. Amoruso spent her teens hitchhiking, committing petty theft, and scrounging in dumpsters for leftover bagels. By age twenty-two she had dropped out of school, and was broke, directionless. Flash forward ten years to today, and she’s the founder and executive chairman of Nasty Gal, a $250-million-plus fashion retailer with more than four hundred employees. #GIRLBOSS proves that being successful isn’t about where you went to college or how popular you were in high school. It’s about trusting your instincts and following your gut; knowing which rules to follow and which to break; when to button up and when to let your freak flag fly.