Featured Selections

Underwater Adventures with Louis and Louise

by Stephen T. Schram
Young Readers/Non-fiction
Orange Hat Publishing
Paperback, 62 pages
$14.99

Stephen Schram spent over three decades as a fisheries biologist on Lake Superior. His desire to inspire young readers to develop an interest in fish and the Great Lakes resulted in this book. This story follows a brother-and-sister lake trout duo as they receive life lessons from Grandpa Mack, spend a special night around the cedar stump, narrowly escape being eaten, and swim through the magic box. Along the way, they learn about the importance of respecting other fish, habitat loss, and the ecological health of the Great Lakes. Their kind, adventurous spirit provides a moral compass for all species.

The Wright Brothers

by David McCullough
History
Simon & Schuster
Hardcover, 336 pages
$30.00

David McCullough is back! His special brand of historical biography and graceful style turns this time to Wilbur and Orville Wright and their quest for powered flight. It doesn’t have the weight (literally and figuratively) of his books on Adams, Roosevelt and Truman, but it is story well told. It opens with their early years in the family home in Dayton, Ohio. It follows their years as bicycle makers and into Wilbur’s momentous letter to the Smithsonian inquiring into its archive of any material regarding human flight. He is careful to emphasize that he “is not a crank” and ultimately enlists the cooperation of the institution. More of the best in popular history!

The Whites

by Richard Price (writing as Harry Brandt)
Mystery
Henry Holt & Co.
Hardcover, 352 pages
$28.00

In The Whites, Richard Price delivers a story that is taut, tough and true. In the context of the gritty, day-to-day beat of the NYPD, a niche environment most of us will never enter, Price conducts his own investigation taking us deep into the moral dilemmas and intricate complexities that make up every human soul wherever we may be. The story is about the former members of a police unit known as the "Wild Geese" and their never-ending battle to deal with their "whites," the criminals who got away with a serious crime on their watch. What begins as a pure desire to do “good” and pursue justice unravels into obsession with hunting down their former nemeses at whatever cost. Yes! The author fully intends you to draw parallels to Captain Ahab’s famous hunt of his own white whale in Moby Dick.  Highly recommended.

  A Broken Hallelujah: The Life of Leonard Cohen

by Liel Leibovitz
Biography
WW Norton & Company
Paperback, 288 pages
$15.95

Being of a certain age and temperament, we are dyed-in-the-wool fans of the inimitable Canadian poet, songwriter, and singer Leonard Cohen. Liebovitz declares categorically at the outset, “This is not a biography of Leonard Cohen.”  That has already been done quite admirably by Sylvie Simmons in I’m Your Man (2013). This one is more a spiritual fan letter. It delves deeply into his Judaism and traces his influences from the Gregorian monks to Rinzai Zen Buddhism. It’s a small and slender book that captures an essential side of this unique character, but it’s not the whole story. Nicely written.

Beneath the Bonfire

by Nickolas Butler
Short Stories
Thomas Dunne Books
Hardcover, 272 pages
$23.99

This is one of our favorites this year! We were already huge fans of Butler's debut novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, and this new collection of short stories has definitely not disappointed. In the unforgettable opener, “The Chainsaw Soiree,” a cherished recurring winter-solstice party ends up offering complicated betrayals and resentments among a group of friends and lovers. Butler has a profound sense of place setting his stories in rural Wisconsin, but even more so, his connection to the human spirit and experience carries through each and every story. Be sure to join us on June 29th for an exciting author event with Nick and also Benjamin Percy (review below).

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

by Richard Flanagan
General Fiction
Vintage
Paperback, 416 pages
$15.95

One of the truly monstrous episodes of WWII was the construction of the Thai-Burma Railway – the so-called “Death Railway” or just “The Line” – by inmates of a Japanese prison camp and Asian slave laborers. The workers were beaten, often to death, and were riddled with malaria, cholera, beriberi, ulcers, and fever. This provides the setting for an exquisitely lyrical novel of savagery, survival, and love. The characters, especially the camp surgeon Dorrigo Evans and the camp’s senior officer Major Nakamura, are drawn with Haiku-like precision. In fact, the novel’s title is taken from the work of the same name by the great Haiku poet Basho. This book took the Man Booker Prize for 2014. Excellent!

If You Plant a Seed

by Kadir Nelson
Children's
Balzer + Bray
Hardcover, 32 pages
$18.99

Kadir Nelson, acclaimed author of Baby Bear and winner of the Caldecott Honor and the Coretta Scott King Author and Illustrator Awards, presents a resonant, gently humorous story about the power of even the smallest acts and the rewards of compassion and generosity. With spare text and breathtaking oil paintings, If You Plant a Seed demonstrates not only the process of planting and growing for young children but also how a seed of kindness can bear sweet fruit.

Trigger Warning

by Neil Gaiman
Short Stories/Anthologies
William Morrow
Hardcover, 352 pages
$26.99

In this new anthology, Neil Gaiman pierces the veil of reality to reveal the enigmatic, shadowy world that lies beneath. Trigger Warning includes previously published pieces of short fiction--stories, verse, and a very special Doctor Who story that was written for the fiftieth anniversary of the beloved series in 2013. Also included is, "Black Dog," a new tale that revisits the world of American Gods, exclusive to this collection. Full of wonder and terror, surprises and amusements, Trigger Warning is a treasury of delights that engage the mind, stir the heart, and shake the soul from one of the most unique and popular literary artists of our day.

The Carry Home

by Gary Ferguson
Reflections on Nature
Counterpoint Press
Hardcover, 296 pages
$25.00

Shortly before her death, Jane Ferguson told her husband that, if she were to die before him, he should scatter her ashes in five wilderness locations that had been intimate parts of their life together. In this moving chronicle Gary Ferguson fulfills that promise. His act of “carry home” is told in tones of bereavement and celebration of their twenty-five years together in the natural world. His previous books, including Walking Down the Wild and Shouting at the Sky are in a more traditional mode of nature writing. This one is more personal and evocative of not only our connection to nature, but our connection to each other. “At first, the journeys broke my heart,” he writes. “Later they helped me to piece it together again.”  Winner of the 2015 Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute’s Nature Writing Award.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

by Haruki Murakami
Memoir
Vintage
Paperback, 192 pages
$14.95

So-called “March Madness” is perhaps, the year’s most intense and concentrated period of sports enthusiasm in the United States. It’s the Big Dance and the Brackets.  Everyone seems to do it. Even Obama does it on national TV. So, what’s the antithesis of the race to the Final Four in sports literature? Well, maybe Haruki Murakami is the answer. Unlike the collective mania of the NCAA tournament, running is the most solitary of sports activities. Murakami took up writing rather late in life and he didn't take up running until well into his middle age. Now he has run marathons, super-marathons and triathlons. He’s also written more than a dozen novels and volumes of short stories. This book is a meditation on running and also a nod to writing and growing old. The translation by Philip Gabriel preserves the spare, lean language and opaque tone of the Japanese. It makes you want to…well, think about… going for a long run.

Where You Go is Not Who You'll Be

by Frank Bruni
General Non-fiction
Grand Central Publishing
Hardcover, 224 pages
$25.00

Our eldest grandson has turned 17 and his eyes are turning toward his college years. What school does he want? Which school will want him? These questions seem to have become the basis of an existential crisis for modern American families. Frank Bruni, a columnist for the New York Times, has served up something of an antidote. He debunks, with statistical support, the notion that one’s success is directly related to the pedigree of the school attended. What really counts is the student’s attitude, effort, and achievement in and out of the classroom at whatever institution is attended. Bruni also indicts the elite colleges for their efforts to cynically inflate their desirability and accessibility by “ginning up desire in order to frustrate it.” We’d like to see our grandson choose a place with an interesting mix of serious students taught by engaged and gifted teaching professors. This book is a breath of fresh air.

A Boy and a Jaguar

by Alan Rabinowitz
Children's
HMH Books for Young Readers
Hardcover, 32 pages
$16.99

Winner of the 2015 Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award for Children! Alan loves animals, but the great cat house at the Bronx Zoo makes him sad. Why are they all alone in empty cages? Are they being punished? More than anything, he wants to be their champion—their voice—but he stutters uncontrollably.

Except when he talks to animals…

Then he is fluent.

Follow the life of the man Time Magazine calls, "the Indiana Jones of wildlife conservation"as he searches for his voice and fulfills a promise to speak for animals, and people, who cannot speak for themselves. This real-life story with tender illustrations by Catia Chien explores truths not defined by the spoken word.

Falling in Love

by Donna Leon
Mystery
Atlantic Monthly Press
Hardcover, 256 pages
$26.00

Twenty-five years and twenty-four books ago, Donna Leon - a New Englander of Irish descent who spent over 25 years living in Venice, Italy - stumbled virtually by accident into her enormously successful and prolific career of crime writing. A casual conversation between friends sparked an idea to eliminate a much-despised conductor in the grand La Fenice opera house in Venice. Leon, by way of a joke and with no background whatsoever in fiction writing, offered to create a plausible scenario for this murder, and the wildly popular Brunetti series was born. Donna Leon is an unapologetic elitist. As one reviewer noted “the audience she aims at (as she cheerfully admits) is educated, civilized, well-read, morally alert, and intellectually curious.” Nevertheless her characters are warm, accessible, full of life and very engaging. The social and political issues she tackles are real human problems that face not just Venice, but many urban areas worldwide. Her writing style is open and inviting. Sometimes the mystery is front and center; often it’s the totality of the story and her characters that is engrossing even if the mystery is easy to solve. Her latest novel, Falling in Love, tends toward the latter. It brings us back to La Fenice and the diva featured in Leon’s first book, this time as a victim of a stalker, rather than a suspect. The mystery is fairly easy to unravel but her characters shine with their usual radiance and her chronicle of obsessive love and its torturous consequences is absorbing.

The Big Seven

by Jim Harrison
Mystery
Grove Press
Hardcover, 352 pages
$26.00

Well, Sunderson’s back! Query whether he has a first name other than “Detective”? This is something of a sequel to Harrison’s The Great Leader and, again, Sunderson is awash in a backwater of sex, mayhem, alcohol, and fishing in the UP.  His marriage is over and the detective is obsessed with the Seven Deadly Sins. He wants to add an eighth – violence. The story has plenty of it as Sunderson tries to unravel the series of killings in the Ames clan. More interesting than the suspense are his (or, perhaps more accurately, Harrison’s) ruminations on the nature of life, maleness, sin, and of course, fishing. Vintage Harrison? Not really, but a good read.

In Mary's Garden

by Tina and Carson Kugler
Children's
HMH Books for Young Readers
Hardcover, 32 pages
$16.99

Milwaukee Natives Tina and Carson Kugler present an inviting picture book biography of Wisconsin artist Mary Nohl. We meet the artist as a young girl, just discovering her talent, and watch as her front yard sculpture garden comes to life. While the rest of her classmates were making pastries in cooking classes, Mary Nohl was making art-anything she fancied out of anything she could find. Inspiration struck Mary even when she wasn’t looking for it. Mary used common objects to make uncommon art. And one day, her garden was a gallery.

Diary of a Citizen Scientist

by Sharman Apt Russell
Reflections on Nature
Oregon State University Press
Paperback, 224 pages
$18.99

A top candidate for the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, this book is an eye-opener into the citizen scientist movement. Seemingly out-of-nowhere hundreds of thousands of volunteers are reshaping how scientific research is done. They are accumulating millions of data points beyond the reach of formal scientists – on weather, wildlife migration, cosmic mapping, new species, etc. – and sharing them with laboratory and other partners. Russell recounts her year-long quest to fill in a “blank spot on the map of tiger beetles.”  She ranges along the Gila River in southwestern New Mexico – butterfly net in hand – observing, studying and reporting on the red-bellied Tiger Beetle to her scientist colleagues. And, it’s new, interesting, and important stuff! Along the way she brings to life the emergence and reach of citizen scientists like her who are engaged in this fascinating development. Nicely written, too.

Eyes Wide Open

by Paul Fleischman
Young Adult Non-fiction
Candlewick
Paperback, 208 pages
$9.99

Winner of the 2015 Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award for Young Readers! Prompted by the disturbingly regular sight of dead bees on his driveway, Paul Fleischman has done our beleaguered planet a kindness: He’s inspected its environmental ills and given the next generation some analytical tools to sort through them. SONWA committee member Jan Penn believes this book leads young readers “to explore human motivations, influences, and barriers in the decision making process and matters of societal and cultural bias impacting environmental headlines.” Fleischman effectively offers teens an environmental wake-up call and a tool kit for decoding the stream of conflicting information confronting them.

The Great Lakes Water Wars

by Peter Annin
Great Lakes/Non-fiction
Island Press
Paperback, 320 pages
$30.00

Since just 1960, Central Asia’s Aral Sea, formerly the world’s 4th largest lake, has lost 90 percent of its surface area and 75 percent of its volume – all the result of human diversions and interventions! Is that the fate of our Great Lakes? The Great Lakes Basin holds some six quadrillion gallons (5000 cubic miles!) of fresh water and represents about 20 percent of all the fresh surface water on the earth. Former Newsweek correspondent and new co-director of Northland College’s Center for Fresh Water Innovation, Annin writes the definitive and accessible account of the issues related to the growing competition for the water resources of the Great Lakes. By extrapolation it is the account of the global crisis. Published in 2006, the book is due for a dusting-off and updating in the coming couple of years, but don’t wait for that, read it now!

The Girl on the Train

by Paula Hawkins
Mystery
Riverhead Books
Hardcover, 326 pages
$26.95

OK! So this is the smash hit of the season! Standing No. 1 on bestseller lists from New York to Los Angeles this is the Gone Girl of 2015. It leads the current pack of this emerging sub-genre of literary thrillers by and about women that includes Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm and Her by Harriet Lane. Rachel is the girl on the train plying her dreary commute each day between London and her dismal life on the fringe. She’s a forlorn, alcoholic divorcee whose route takes her past the house where she lived more or less happily with her former husband. But then she begins to see other things and other things lead to other things as she slides in and out of her binges and blackouts. Two other women share the narrative – Anna, her former husband’s new wife; and, Megan, who disappears from her usual presence a few doors down from Rachel’s former home. There’s plenty of suspense and some compelling exploration of the psychological and social pressures faced by women in today’s dysfunctional world.

Funny Girl

by Nick Hornby
General Fiction
Riverhead Books
Hardcover, 453 pages
$27.95

From the bestselling author of High Fidelity, About a Boy, and A Long Way Down, comes a highly anticipated new novel.

Set in 1960's London, Funny Girl is a lively account of the adventures of the intrepid young Sophie Straw as she navigates her transformation from provincial ingénue to television starlet amid a constellation of delightful characters. Insightful and humorous, Nick Hornby's latest does what he does best: endears us to a cast of characters who are funny if flawed, and forces us to examine ourselves in the process.

The Skull Mantra

by Eliot Pattison
Mystery
Minotaur Books
Paperback, 416 pages
$16.99

Knowing how excited we are to discover intelligent mystery series that penetrate the lesser known cultures, historical events, political conflicts, and corners of the globe, a customer highly recommended the series by Eliot Pattison set in Chinese occupied Tibet. We enthusiastically agree! The first in the series, The Skull Mantra, unravels a compelling mystery while immersing the reader in the deep and painful conflict between the native Tibetan Buddhists and the controlling Maoist communists. Additionally, the author treats the reader to a vivid portrayal of the remarkable beauty and ancient mystery of the Himalayan mountains. We are looking forward to continuing our way through the series!

Rounding the Mark

by Andrea Camilleri
Mystery
Penguin Books
Paperback, 276 pages
$15.00

On a leisurely swim on the Sicilian seashore Inspector Montalbano bumps into a corpse floating on the water. His subsequent investigation reveals a tangled web of murder, smuggling, and human trafficking. But, the macabre tale (first published in 2003) is underlain by a charming subtext of the life, culinary delights and bureaucratic bumbling of the Italian police. Camilleri’s work – including the long series of police procedurals involving Inspector Camilleri – is reminiscent of that of the delightful Donna Leon. Her series follows the detective work, dietary preferences and family life of Commisario Guido Brunetti. The difference is the setting. Leon’s stories unfold in the elegance of Venice; Camilleri’s play out on the hardscrabble coast of Sicily. Watch out, they’re both addictive!