Featured Selections

 Khirbet Khizeh

by S. Yizhar (Yizhar Smilansky)
General Fiction
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Paperback, 145 pages
$14.95

One of the nagging questions underlying the Palestinian Question is: What exactly happened in 1948 when the Zionists took control of the land that was to become Israel? Was it ethnic cleansing – as Smilansky (a Jew and longtime member of the Knesset) himself puts it, “the original sin of the State of Israel” – or was it something else? This elegant small novel tells the story of a young Israeli soldier under orders to clear out and destroy the Palestinian village of Khirbet Khizeh. Written in 1949, this book combines its stature as an historical document with haunting and lyrical prose to provide an alternative view of the nature and sources of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Missing Person

by Patrick Modiano
General Fiction
David R Godine Press
Paperback, 168 pages
$16.95

Guy Roland has lived for ten years as a private investigator’s apprentice in Paris. The problem is that he has done so without an identity. An acute case of amnesia has left him with no memory whatsoever of who he is and none whatsoever of his origins and past. Upon the retirement of his mentor, Guy undertakes the ultimate investigation – the search for himself. At its surface, the book is a tight detective thriller - reminiscent of Chandler and Hammett – with loose ends beginning to be tied together as the story emerges. At another level it deals with the years of the Paris Occupation and the loss – intentional or otherwise – of memory and the self. We like the title of the French edition: Rue des Boutiques Obscures. Modiano was the winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Wilderness Warrior

by Douglas Brinkley
History
Harper Perennial
Paperback, 960 pages
$19.99

I so declare it! And so it was that over 230 million acres of America’s forests, wild lands and waters, and the wildlife that called them home, were protected from development and desecration by the mere scratch of a quill. Since boyhood, Theodore Roosevelt (only people who didn’t know him well called him Teddy) had been enthralled with the natural world, becoming a prodigious collector and taxidermist and starting a wildlife museum before he was even a teenager. A sickly child, he was advised to live quietly and protect his heart. To the contrary (and a contrarian he was), he plunged headfirst into his life with boisterous spirit and intense vitality, gathering a host of fervent and loyal admirers and equally impassioned enemies along the way. Through his own personal experience, he was captivated by the healing and strengthening power of the wilderness and believed deeply that it was the very essence of democracy to ensure that every American could experience this connection with the magnificent natural legacy contained within America and her territories. He was literally disgusted with the greed, corruption and petty short-sighted profiteering of his fellow man and committed his life to fighting the forces of destruction and protecting America’s treasure for future generations. In The Wilderness Warrior, Douglas Brinkley tells this captivating story of an extraordinary and complex man, his compatriots and how together they accomplished the impossible. A terrific book!

Caribou: Poems

by Charles Wright
Poetry
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Hardcover, 96 pages
$23.00

Late last year Charles Wright was named our new Poet Laureate by Librarian of Congress James Billington. Wright received this assignment in his 79^th year. He recalled some of his younger predecessors – Rita Dove, Billy Collins, Robert Pinsky – whom he found “young and vibrant” and active. He finds himself “old and vibrant” and committed, as Poet Laureate, to just “sit here and vibrate and not do a thing." As he says in Ancient of Days:

 
This is the entirety of Whatever Happened to Al Lee:
 

 
This is an old man’s poetry. And, it’s the real thing.

The Boston Girl

by Anita Diamant
General Fiction
Scribner
Hardcover, 336 pages
$26.00

For those who loved Diamant’s immensely powerful feminist novel, The Red Tent, The Boston Girl is likely to be a significant departure and disappointment. It is almost the diametric opposite. Presented as a transcript of a tape-recorded monologue of an 85-year-old woman speaking to her granddaughter, Diamant’s story manages to touch on many of the very significant challenges facing a young woman in early 20^th century America, and more specifically a Jewish immigrant. For this, it was interesting and at least one of us here at the bookshop did appreciate reading it. However, there is no denying that the telling of the story remains throughout superficial, devoid of complexity, almost rote, leaving the reader wanting so much more. The Boston Girl is more like a concept piece for a book Diamant’s intending to write than a finished novel of an accomplished writer.

The Fourteenth Goldfish

by Jennifer L. Holm
Middle Reader
Random House Books for Young Readers
Hardcover, 208 pages
$16.99

Warm, wise, and wonderfully accessible, The Fourteenth Goldfish is, on the surface, the entertaining story of an 11-year-old whose grandfather has found a way to reverse aging and is now forced to attend middle school alongside her. But dig a little deeper and you'll find this novel is a rich invitation for readers to explore and ponder big questions about the world and our place in it. Kids should come away with increased appreciation for and/or interest in science, discovery, experimentation, the history of medicine, and much, much more.

Descent: A Novel

by Tim Johnston
Mystery
Algonquin Books
Hardcover, 384 pages
$25.95

In this taut page-turner, an 18-year old Wisconsin girl in the Colorado Rockies on a family vacation is abducted while out on a run with her younger brother. If Descent were just a thriller, it would be quite a satisfactory read. It provides all of the requisite adrenaline rushes, chills, thrills and emotional turmoil expected in such a book. However, it is so much more than that. Johnston’s writing is lyrical, even poetic at times, and his insight into his characters and their personal predicaments, as well as into the abductor’s madness, is as compelling as the drama of the story he unfolds. A breath-taking ride that you will be pondering long after you put it down.

Ruhlman's How to Roast: Foolproof Techniques for the Home Cook

by Michael Ruhlman
Cooking/Food
Little, Brown & Co.
Hardcover, 160 pages
$25.00

Humankind has been roasting for millennia. The term originally referred to cooking over an open fire, usually on some kind of spit. It has evolved to the cooking of meat or vegetables or even fruit in an oven. It refers to a "dry heat" (and usually high-heat) method of making things irresistibly appetizing.

How to Roast combines practical advice - what tools you need, staple ingredients to have on hand, how to get the most out of your oven. There are 20 original and mouthwatering recipes, chosen to showcase a wide range of roasting methods and results. Included are "The Icon" (roast chicken), monkfish roasted with tomatoes and basil, roasted peaches with mint crème fraiche. Dozens of color photographs offer step-by-step illustration as well as finished-dish showpieces.

Brain on Fire

by Susannah Cahalan
Health & Psychology
Simon & Schuster
Paperback, 288 pages
$16.00

This one is just out in paperback and reads like a gripping suspense novel. The author, a twenty-four year old New York Post reporter at the time, regained consciousness after a month-long confinement in a psychiatric ward. She was strapped down and under guard. She had no memory of the violent and psychotic circumstances that had led her there. The story of her illness and the medical response by a dogged team of physicians – including a “Dr. House” – is absolutely fascinating.  Cahalan’s writing makes an already harrowing story even better. She’s the real thing and this will rank among the best of medical procedurals.

The Burning Room

by Michael Connelly
Mystery
Little, Brown & Co.
Hardcover, 400 pages
$28.00

It’s a hot title for a cold case, but this newly-published Harry Bosch police procedural is another in that series of winners. Here Bosch is paired with a rookie partner, Lucia Soto, a young Latina who soon mirrors the skills of her new mentor. Nine years ago the victim was shot by a supposedly stray bullet. Now he has died and become the work of the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit. Soon it is apparent that the shooting may not have been random, but rather part of a political intrigue. As always with Harry Bosch, this one is hard to put down so it is best to start it on a Friday evening in winter.

The Heather Blazing

by Colm Toibin
General Fiction
Scribner
Paperback, 256 pages
$15.00

Having spent recent time in Spain, we are reminded of the enormous pleasure we take in the work of Colm Toibin. At twenty years of age, immediately after his graduation from University College Dublin, he left for Barcelona where he remained for several years and which he took as his second home. His early work, The South, set in Spain and Ireland, and Homage to Barcelona, a portrait of one of Europe’s greatest cities, were deeply inspired by his love of Catalonia. This second novel, The Heather Blazing, is all Ireland. It relates a year in the life of Eamon Redmond, a judge in the Irish High Court, and probes the history of his intimate family relationships and how they formed him. Alternating between his present and his childhood the man is revealed with emotional intensity and crystalline prose. Deeply moving. Profoundly sad.

A Bean, A Stalk, and a Boy Named Jack

by William Joyce
Children's
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Hardcover, 56 pages
$17.99

When a king's pinky grows stinky, it is up to a smallish boy and a smallish pea to come up with a GIANT plan to save the kingdom; a fractured fairy tale from William Joyce. This beautifully illustrated story was such a pleasant surprise to us! If the quirky conversations in this book don't make you smile, there may be something seriously wrong.

You might think you know the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, but you just may want to think again. In this fairy tale with a twist, it hasn't rained in days and the king has dictated that something must be done; his royal pinky is getting stinky! With a little magic from a wizard, young Jack, paired with his pea pod pal, will find a GIANT reason as to why there's no water left in the kingdom...and prove that size doesn't prevent anyone from doing something BIG.

Leningrad: Siege and Symphony

by Brian Moynahan
History
Atlantic Monthly Press
Hardcover, 496 pages
$30.00

The Leningrad Symphony (Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7) was played in what now is again St. Petersburg for the first time on August 9, 1942. It was the 335th day of the vicious 900-day Nazi siege of the city. Played by an ensemble of emaciated musicians on the verge of starvation, the performance was so rare and powerful that it would never again be matched. Moynahan’s story is a metronome of terror: the tick being the ceaseless shelling and bombing of the city by Hitler’s Wehrmacht; the tock being the unrelenting nightmare of the purges carried out by Stalin’s NKVD. On another scale, the story swings back and forth between the desperate lives of the Leningraders and Shostakovich’s composition of the symphony. It all plays out against a drumbeat of starvation, executions and Gulag sentences among the musicians of the Leningrad Philharmonia. The writing is vivid and compelling and does full justice to “the greatest story ever played.”

The Meaning of Human Existence

by Edward O. Wilson
Science, Mind & Matter
Liveright Press
Hardcover, 208 pages
$23.95

Ordinarily the existential questions addressed here would strike us as sophomoric in the extreme. What is the meaning of life? Do we have free will? Is there a God? But, wait! They are being posed by none other than E. O. Wilson who is, perhaps, the giant among the biologists of our time. In this small volume, Wilson considers these questions with breadth, depth, grace, brilliance and generosity. Of course, much depends upon the Clintonesque qualifier that: “It depends upon what the meaning of ‘meaning’ is.”  Wilson posits “the broader, science-based meaning of human existence” which is, “the capacity to decide, and how and why the capacity came into being, and the consequences that followed.”  His is a lively and accessible argument, but, if you proceed to the Appendix, you might want to be willing to become comfortable with such notions as, “inclusive fitness,” and “allele frequency changes.”

The Book With No Pictures

by B.J. Novak
Children's
Dial Press
Harcover, 48 pages
$17.99

We dare you to read this book to the young people in your life and not giggle. Comedian B.J. Novak is better known for his stand-up comedy, his role on The Office or his recent book of short stories, One More Thing. This book is irresistibly silly and the young people in your life will beg to have it read to them over and over again. Take a moment to watch this video of Novak reading excerpts to a group of young children.

Station Eleven

by Emily St. John Mandel
General Fiction
Knopf
Hardcover, 352 pages
$24.95

This novel has been described as the perfect post-apocalyptic story for those who hate post-apocalyptic stories. We couldn't agree more. The story essentially begins with the end of the world. One night, in a Toronto theater, onstage performing the role of King Lear, 51-year-old Arthur Leander has a fatal heart attack. There is barely time for people to absorb this shock when tragedy on a significantly larger scale arrives in the form of a flu pandemic so lethal that, within weeks, most of the world’s population has been killed.

What makes Station Eleven so impressive is the way that it departs from generic convention. The novel is less horror story than elegiac lament; its pacing is slow and its style understated. It is terrifying, reminding us of how paper-thin the achievements of civilization are. But it’s also surprisingly — and quietly — beautiful.

A Distant Father

by Antonio Skarmeta
General Fiction
Other Press
Hardcover, 112 pages
$15.95

With one of the great contemporary voices of Latin America, Skarmeta’s work has inspired a pair of superb motion pictures – Il Postino and No. The former is the captivating story of a rural postman who delivers mail to Pablo Neruda during his exile to an isolated island. The latter captures the thrilling campaign to defeat the dictator Pinochet in the plebiscite of 1988. A Distant Father is a more intimate and personal novel (novella, really) of coming of age. There is a plot within the plot that reveals itself suddenly at the close of the story. There is a bakery, a train station, a whorehouse, and a movie theater. There is love, sex, betrayal and the hint of redemption. In a curious twist, this provincial village in the remote south of Chile has taken on a decidedly French flavor - the father is a Frenchman; the son a translator of French poetry. It is a nod to a convergence of esthetic sensibilities between the two countries and their literary connectedness. Felix J. Palma of the New York Times calls it “a fun and ironic story of the road toward maturity.”

Little Hawk and the Lone Wolf: A Memoir

by Raymond C. Kaquatosh
Native Americana
Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Hardcover, 200 pages
$22.95

“Little Hawk” was born Raymond Kaquatosh in 1924 on Wisconsin’s Menominee Reservation. The son of a medicine woman, Ray spent his Depression-era boyhood immersed in the beauty of the natural world and the traditions of his tribe and his family.

After his father’s death, eight-year-old Ray was sent to an Indian boarding school in Keshena. There he experienced isolation and despair, but also comfort and kindness. Upon his return home, Ray remained a lonely boy in a full house until he met and befriended a lone timber wolf. The unusual bond they formed would last through both their lifetimes. As Ray grew into a young man, he left the reservation more frequently. Yet whenever he returned-from school and work, from service in the Marines, and finally from postwar Wausau with his future wife-the wolf waited.

In this rare first-person narrative of a Menominee Indian’s coming of age, Raymond Kaquatosh shares a story that is wise and irreverent, often funny, and in the end, deeply moving.

Brown Girl Dreaming

by Jacqueline Woodson
Middle Readers
Nancy Paulsen Books
Hardcover, 336 pages
$16.99

If our daughters were still teenagers this is the book that we would give them. Writing in vivid free verse, Woodson tells the story of growing up as an African American in the 1960’s and 70’s in Ohio, South Carolina and New York. She walks a fine line between fiction and memoir and captures the best attributes of each. The characters and places are drawn in a braided poetic storyline rife with sorrow and joy. Mother, grandfather, grandmother, sister, and uncle – dad remains mostly at large. Columbus, Greenville and Brooklyn. She grows into a writer. 
 
Her previous work has been in the young adult fiction genre and has been critically acclaimed. Among her prizes are the Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, the Newbury Honor Medal, and the Caldecott Medal. We wish there were more books like this for teens and tweens. As for our daughters, now in their 40’s, we’ll give them this book anyway!

Subtle Bodies

by Norman Rush
General Fiction
Vintage
Paperback, 256 pages
$15.00

Michiku Kakutani of the New York Times refers to this book as a, "claustrophobic and totally annoying novel." If you were to read the summary of this novel about a group of college friends reuniting for the funeral of one of their own, you are likely to think of "The Big Chill." Let's just say, the movie is much better.

Ned and Nina are, for the most part, the main characters in this story. They have rushed to the Catskills upon the news of the tragic death of Ned's dear old friend, Douglas. The characters in this story are far from relatable and, if Rush was looking for black humor, he failed. This book simply is not funny. Their concerns and problems are those of people who don't have much to worry about in life. That said, Rush's writing style is strong, and the storyline (as absurd as it may be) did hold us through the end. If you are looking for a bit of the ridiculous, this just may be the book for you.

What do the latest developments in cognitive learning and the 1900 Alaska gold rush have in common? Actually, nothing other than the very gifted and multifaceted St. Paul-based author, Peter C. Brown. We encountered Brown through his latest book, Make it Stick, in which he skillfully translates into plainspoken English the compelling cognitive research and findings of Professors Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel of Washington University in St. Louis. They suggest that there is a significantly more effective way to approach learning and teaching than most of us are currently using. Always appreciative of new ways to bolster our aptitude, we intend to try it out! In the course of reviewing Make it Stick, we fortunately also stumbled across Brown’s novel, The Fugitive Wife, which tells a passionate, powerful tale of a Midwestern farm girl fleeing from personal tragedy and a stormy marriage. She joins up with prospectors bound for Nome, Alaska. Drawn in part from his own grandfather’s story as a Nome gold-rush miner, Brown masterfully creates an authentic, deeply satisfying story with high adventure, romance, harsh landscape and physical challenge. Brown's high-powered characters whose prickly exteriors, created out of the need to survive, hide affectingly yearning and haunted souls. We highly recommend both books and are very pleased to hear that a second novel is in the works. Not widely known, Peter Brown is an exceptionally talented storyteller who may yet see his name on the bestseller lists.

Stoner

by John Williams
General Fiction
NYRB Classics
Paperback, 288 pages
$14.95

There are two very interesting questions about this book. Why is this American novel – one of the best of the 20th Century – virtually unknown in its own country? And, why is it a runaway bestseller in Europe almost 50 years after its publication? A week or so ago a young Danish couple came in and asked for Stoner. They were astonished we didn’t have it and, in fact, that we didn’t know of it. “It is wildly popular in Denmark," they said.  Needless to say it was in our next delivery and soon on our bedside table. And what a book it is! Morris Dickstein of the New York Times wrote in 2007 that Stoner, “is something rarer than a great novel — it is a perfect novel."  C.P. Snow said of it in 1973 that, “very few novels in English…have come anywhere near its level for human wisdom or as a work of art.” The story is the life of the fictional William Stoner (1891-1956). He was a dirt-poor farmer’s son who became a life-long professor of literature at the University of Missouri. Beautifully written, profoundly moving, sad and painful! It is, perhaps, the story of all of our lives. Spoiler alert: skip the Introduction.