New Fiction

Kafka on the Shore
by Haruki Murakami (Knopf)

Haruki Murakami’s new novel, his most ambitious since The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, gives one Kafka in the title, "Kafka" as a central character, even Kafka in song. As usual, nothing is usual in Murakami’s world—a runaway teenage boy embarks on a quest that leads him to a mysterious woman in a library. She may or may not be his mother. Meanwhile, a "simple" man who talks with cats is also linked and central to the wonderings and wanderings of this beautiful, disturbing, startling novel. -R. Simonson

Epileptic
by David B. (Pantheon)

Few people now can doubt the power of graphica to meaningfully convey emotions. To those disbelievers, here is Epileptic, an artful, unflinching memoir from David B., a member of L’Association, a revolutionary group of French cartoonists. The author’s budding artistic leanings are juxtaposed with his brother, whose difficult case of epilepsy threatens to destroy his family. In search of any trace of a cure they can follow, the family wanders from New Age quacks to snake oil salesmen in the hope that this crippling condition can be cured. Responsibility, duty, familial love, embracing the near-unlovable...can any reader dismiss this as a ’funnybook?’ -P. Constant

Before the Frost
by Henning Mankell (New Press)

In Kurt Wallander, Henning Mankell crafted one of the most memorable characters in modern crime fiction. In Mankell’s latest novel, Wallander’s daughter, Linda, set to join the Ystad Police Department, has a mystery to solve involving her missing friend, Anna, Anna’s father, a severed head, and a heavily annotated Bible. Linda seems to share her father’s qualities: self doubt, flaring temper, keen insight, and dogged determination to see a case through. It looks as if she will continue the legacy of her father, and Mankell will continue to bless readers with these stories. -M. Voss

God Lives in St. Petersburg and Other Stories
by Tom Bissell (Pantheon)

Bissell follows up his excellent Uzbekistan travelogue, Chasing the Sea, with this selection of short stories, reflective of the dangers that arise when Westerners encounter the Byzantine cultures of Central Asia. The reasons for journeying to these remote regions vary from journalism to missionary and relief work, and Bissell shows how misunderstood words or customs can have sinister (and deadly) repercussions. He highlights the desires and complexities driving the region through the eyes of mobsters, children, soldiers, and farmers. From war-torn Afghanistan to the outskirts of the devastated Aral Sea, this collection provides a glimpse into the secret heart of Central Asia. -V. Verano

Alamut
by Vladimir Bartol (Scala House)

Alamut is a Persian fortress built into the sides of a cliff, ruled by Sayyiduna, who possesses the key to Paradise. Under his command are the feday, the brightest and bravest of all his forces. The best of them are chosen to enter Paradise while still alive, then return to tell their comrades of the bliss that would come after death. But "nothing is true; everything is permitted."

This Slovenian novel has been translated by Seattleite Michael Biggins and beautifully published by Seattle’s Scala House Press. A European bestseller, Alamut is certain to dazzle, enchant, and inform American readers. -J. Brown

Sightseeing
by Rattawut Lapcharoensap (Grove Atlantic)

These short stories take readers into Thailand well beyond the standard postcard view. Rattawut Lapcharoensap’s wit is as sharp as his powers of observation as he gives shape to the lives of gamblers and addicts, mothers and sons, a little Cambodian refugee whose family’s fortunes are in her gold-filled mouth, and an old American facing the end of his life in a country where he is the foreigner. This book is a feast, generously filled with vivid details of life in Thailand, while showing the wonderful universality of all lives, everywhere. -J. Brown

Seven Types of Ambiguity
by Elliot Perlman (Riverhead)

You almost need a flow chart to keep track of all the relationships in Seven Types of Ambiguity. Seven voices, seven versions of the same story, seven forms of dubious truth, seven characters linked by an intricate social web combine to form a novel that is smart, compelling, and enigmatic. Reading it feels almost voyeuristic, until the window of narrative suddenly becomes a mirror. This is a love story for the way we live now, as we search for firm ground with the knowledge that there are very few happy endings. -J. Brown

The Ha-Ha
by Dave King (Little Brown)

This fresh novel for the new year centers on the relationship between the grown-up Howard and the young boy he is thrown into watching, Ryan. What’s difficult is that Howard is mute: he cannot speak or write. That, coupled with the kid’s shyness, doesn’t make for a good start. However, they learn new ways to communicate both the simplest of tasks as well as the more complex. The novel is a touching account of what happens when someone is forced into parenthood, with a twist: who is the real parent? King pulls it all off with witty, believable writing. -A.P. King

The Family Tree
by Carole Cadwalladr (Dutton)

Rebecca Monroe is the product of three generations of miserable marriages and questionable parentage, which prompts her to ask the question: are we the genetic product of those who came before or can we usurp our collective family history? First-time novelist Cadwalladr has written a beautiful, wry story drawn from Rebecca’s childhood memories of her uptight mother, her secretive grandmother, and her own trying marriage to the clinical Alastair. Often heartbreaking and occasionally hilarious, this is the story of what makes us and of what makes family. -H. Myers

Happy Baby
by Stephen Elliott (Picador)

Theo, Happy Baby’s protagonist, is like a pane of glass wrapped in a towel and then shattered—an outward illusion of normalcy while, inside, his thoughts grind in a terrible way. Elliott tells Theo’s story in reverse: from a delicate reunion in his 30s, through his numb 20s, to his time in juvenile-detention centers, and finally to the moment of innocence lost. The writing is lean and elegant, chronicling Theo’s moments of weakness, confusion and loss with great empathy. This book is not for the faint of heart—it’s about the overlooked, the abused, the addicted—but it’s a highly satisfying experience for those who take the chance. -V. Verano

The Noodle Maker
by Ma Jian (Farrar Straus & Giroux)

A professional blood donor shares a meal with an aspiring novelist trapped in his job as a propagandist. The stories the writer would write are interwoven with the lives of the two protagonists, and the result is a novel a thousand times greater than the sum of its parts. In each episode, new light is shed on life in modern China, and with each chapter a new world is opened to the reader. Ma Jian has a true gift for capturing all the beauty and pain of life’s struggles, no matter how brutal the adversity or minor the triumph. -T. Lennon

Pearl
by Mary Gordon (Pantheon)

Mary Gordon’s writing evokes rhythm: short staccato sentences into beautiful crescendos, creating an orchestral experience. Pearl is about Maria, a mother racing to save her daughter, who has handcuffed herself to a flagpole in Ireland, supposedly in remorse for a death that she has caused. Maria finds herself with an old friend of the family, himself near a psychological breaking point of grief. In any other gifted writer’s hands, this would be a compelling page-turner, but with the masterful, musical tones of Gordon’s skillful writing voice, Pearl is a symphony that haunts readers in ways most writers couldn’t begin to attempt. -P. Constant

The Center of Winter
by Marya Hornbacher (HarperCollins)

Arnold Schiller takes his own life in the dead of winter in Motley, Minnesota. He leaves behind his guilt-ridden wife, Claire, his son Esau, who also suffers from depression, and Kate, his six-year-old daughter. Each tells a personal story of grief and recovery during the long winter while considering their places within the family history and the stories they choose to believe. Each member of the family fights to find a way back to one another while coming to terms with a father who was both cruel and loving. -T. Taylor

At Risk
by Stella Rimington (Knopf)

With At Risk, Stella Rimington, former head of Britain’s MI-5, has written a debut novel full of detail, verisimilitude, and a frighteningly plausible plot. Her character, Liz Carlyle, is a lower-echelon intelligence operative who not only has a terrorist plot to foil, but also has to deal with the sexism and chauvinism of her colleagues, a mother who can’t understand why she hasn’t married, and a married lover who wants to leave his wife for her. All Liz would like to do is foil plots and catch spies which I hope to see her continue to do in future novels. -M. Voss

My Jim
by Nancy Rawles (Crown)

The story of Mark Twain’s Jim, escaped slave and friend to Huck Finn, is told through the eyes of Jim’s lover, Sadie Watkins, in Nancy Rawles’s new novel, My Jim. The extraordinary power of this novel is in its ability to transport readers into Sadie’s reality, both through its poetic use of the vernacular that conveys Sadie’s voice and also in the details of her precarious, courageous life. Curl up with this book. Surrender yourself to its rhythms. Imagine wondering about the fate of your children and your lover, and stealing away yourself, one night. -K.M. Allman

The Owner's Box

by Peter Aaron

It’s over at last—for another four years (you know the ordeal to which I refer); and in the aftermath we are divided into closely, but, alas, not evenly balanced groups, experiencing either jubilation or despair. As during the process, so in its wake, few are left without a reaction at one emotional extreme or the other. To those of a celebratory frame of mind, it might be of benefit to paraphrase the two comments offered by author Mark Helprin (himself decidedly pleased at the outcome) during his recent visit to the store on the occasion of his new collection, The Pacific and Other Stories (Penguin): To be in power can be a curse; and, remember, the wheel always turns—it’s merely a matter of how long.

And what of the despondent masses? I’ve noticed, in the weeks since the election, one particular book, of which we normally sell perhaps five or six copies a year, suddenly selling at an accelerated rate. I make no claims of statistical significance here, let alone causality; this is not the stuff of exit polls (then again, perhaps it is)—but there appears to be dramatically enhanced interest in Viktor Frankl’s classic volume Man’s Search for Meaning (Simon & Schuster). Frankl’s book begins with an account of his experiences in Auschwitz and Dachau and his observation that, even under the most horrifically brutal and dehumanizing circumstances imaginable, some people were able to maintain their sense of human dignity. From these experiences Frankl concludes that, regardless of his circumstances, man possesses an inherent freedom to transcend suffering and find meaning in life.

This is very much the same perspective from which Paul Celan weaves together the inmates of the Börgermoor concentration camp with the Jewish defenders of Massada against the Romans in 70 A.D.—men who, in both cases, chose the only form of victory available to them: a moral victory, which far outlasted the ephemeral triumph of their opponents—in his poem "Think of It."

Think of it:
the bog soldier of Massada
teaches himself home, most
inextinguishably,
against
every barb in the wire.

Think of it:
the eyeless with no shape
lead you free through the tumult, you
grow stronger and
stronger.

[from Poems of Paul Celan, translated by Michael Hamburger (Persea)]

One fundamental difference between the jubilants and despondents is that those of the latter camp are compelled to ask the question, "Now what must (or can, or might) I do?" And answer, each of us, within the dictates of our moral courage and conscience.

New Nonfiction

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond (Viking)

Why do some societies collapse, while others succeed? This is the question Jared Diamond attempts to answer in this provocative book, a sequel to Guns, Germs and Steel. Diamond develops a five-point framework of factors that cause a society’s collapse, and then applies it to both ancient and modern societies. He succeeds admirably. Learn why peoples from the ancient Easter Island and Mayan civilizations to present-day Haiti have collapsed or are in the process of collapsing. Who will be next? Or who will heed the author’s warnings in this well-researched and thought-provoking book? -C. Kirchner

Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio
by Jeffrey Kluger (Putnam)

The deaths, debilitation, and misery caused by the polio virus were facts of life in most communities until the mid-1950s, when Jonas Salk and his rival, Albert Sabin, developed two safe and effective vaccinations that eradicated polio in the U.S. and much of the world. Splendid Solution tells the fascinating story of the science, politics, and rivalries of competing teams of scientists working to be the first to prevent this mysterious disease. -K.M. Allman

The Children's Blizzard
by David Laskin (HarperCollins)

David Laskin re-creates the story of the horrendous blizzard that hit the prairie states on the afternoon of January 12th, 1888. This was no ordinary blizzard. The day started very mildly. Within minutes the temperature plunged and the winds howled. Children who had gone to school for the first time in days were caught in the blizzard, trying to make it home or to shelter. As many as five hundred people died, many of them children. Laskin’s book is a harrowing account of what Nicholas D. Kristof described as "America’s greatest mistake…the settlement of the Great Plains." -G. Berry

The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe
by Sarah Bartlett Churchwell (Henry Holt)

It’s been over forty years since Marilyn Monroe was found dead of a suicidal overdose (or was it?) and since then, more than 600 books have been written about her life, many claiming to reveal the "real" Marilyn. So why another? That’s the joke here. This isn’t a biography. Sarah Bartlett Churchwell has ingeniously constructed a book that compares the mounting pile of works that examine our favorite movie icon and asks the question, "Why?" Do we need to know the "real" Marilyn Monroe or can our fantasy suffice? -C. Joyner

Adventures With the Buddha
edited by Jeffery Paine (Norton)

Adventures with the Buddha is filled with stories of Westerners who have experienced mysteries, marvels, exotic discomforts, fabled temples, and that’s only half of it. Then the internal adventures begin.

Three very different American women explain how they learned the practice that has become an integral and transforming core of their daily lives. A successful diamond merchant gives a pragmatic twist to Buddhism, showing how it brings fulfillment to both business dealings and the spirit. These contemporary accounts are as absorbing as the stories from the romantic past, showing that the most exciting explorations take place within our minds and hearts. -J. Brown

What It Takes to Pull Me Through
by David L. Marcus (Houghton Mifflin)

While statistics regarding adolescents can be staggering (drug use, suicide, pregnancy—they’re on the rise!), parents of actual troubled teens are often caught off-guard and under-prepared. David Marcus captures the desperation of both parents and students at the Academy at Swift River—a therapy-driven, wilderness high school for families who’ve run out of options. By following four uniquely problematic kids through the rigorous fourteen-month program, Marcus offers a portrait of hope for anyone who’s ever been confronted or affected by a real-life statistic. -J. Schurk

Stephen Spender: A Literary Life
by John Sutherland (Oxford University Press)

A person’s life can be far more interesting than their work. Or perhaps it is their life that is their work—and with the help of a biography, a fascinating life can be acknowledged. Sutherland has given us an endearing portrait of Stephen Spender—his awkwardness, failures, self-criticism, and achievements. It takes us from Spender’s childhood through his Oxford days, to prominence as a star-studded poet of the 1930s and stubborn socialist. All—through entanglements with boys in Berlin, a part-conversion to heterosexuality, and two marriages—reveals Spender’s talent to live. -D. Kunz

Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of the End of Empire in Kenya
by Caroline Elkins (Henry Holt)

The Mau Mau rebellion has been remembered as an attack of terrorist savages against civilization. It has also been painted as a popular uprising against brutal colonial occupation. Both descriptions miss the larger scale of the war, and Elkins’s well-researched history fills in many of the missing pieces. In challenging British power in their homeland, the Mau Mau and ethnic Kikuyu were seen as a threat to the local colonial administration, and to the entire Empire. The British response to the rebellion—and the subsequent attempts at cover-up—was on a scale not seen since World War II. -T. Lennon

K.
by Roberto Calasso (Knopf)

Having recast whole mythologies and histories most elegantly in The Ruin of Kasch, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, and Ka, Italian author-publisher Roberto Calasso here ruminates on the work of writer, Franz Kafka. This exploration of Kafka’s works is surprisingly straightforward, given that Kafka himself is a fabulist of murky, mythic tendencies. K. reads well, whether one knows Kafka or not: if the former, one yearns to re-read it for the richness Calasso reads in; if the latter, one is all but propelled to pick up the works of the original Herr K. -R. Simonson

Allah's Torch: A Report from Behind the Scenes in Asia's War on Terror
by Tracy Dahlby (William Morrow)

This book, written in a brisk engaging reportorial style about pre- and post-9/11 Indonesia, reads like an adventure story. Indonesia has been described as the next great front in the so-called "war on terror." Dahlby clearly has a great love for Indonesia and its people, but is also disturbed by the radical Islamic elements in the country. The title, Allah’s Torch, is pregnant with the idea that a torch can be a light or an incendiary device. What will happen in Indonesia is still an open question. -G. Berry

Blink
by Malcolm Gladwell (Little Brown)

Malcolm Gladwell has gracefully transformed his fascination with the randomness of trends in The Tipping Point into a new study on the power of instinctual decision-making. By using many examples from seemingly unrelated fields, he’s able to break down each second that makes up these quick decisions to prove how they can be manipulated and, in some cases, perfected.

While Gladwell’s theories are interesting, the magic in his writing comes through with the retelling of his research. Stories of art fraud, military war simulators, and police brutality are enough to keep readers transfixed. -C. Reid

Buddha's Warriors
by Mikel Dunham (Tarcher)

When the Chinese invaded Tibet, they were met with guerilla fighters on horseback who fought with swords, knives, and rifles, and took no prisoners. The Chinese countered with bombed monasteries, torture and massacres.

Monks renounced their vows and became fighters. Small groups of Tibetan refugees were secretly trained by the CIA and returned home to strengthen the resistance. At one point, 30,000 Tibetans surrounded the Dalai Lama’s palace in Lhasa to protect him. This book is the story of heroes, who lost their battle to oust the Chinese but won the war to keep Tibet alive as a culture and an ideal. -J. Brown

Wrong About Japan: A Father's Journey With His Son
by Peter Carey (Knopf)

This book is a story about Japan and about a father and son. Australian novelist Peter Carey’s interest in anime is sparked by his twelve-year old son, Charley. Carey sees a trip to Tokyo as an opportunity to indulge his new interest and provide his son with cultural awareness. If you’re looking for a good introduction to anime, this is it. Carey lays out the must-see classics. But it is the father-son story that Carey shares with openness and honesty that makes this book a gem. Together, they do what neither would have done individually; they see the real Japan. -I. Akio

Trawler
by Redmond O'Hanlon (Knopf)

Redmond O’Hanlon’s latest book seems almost staid when compared to the Amazon adventures of In Trouble Again, his travels in the Congo in No Mercy, and what he endured in Into The Heart of Borneo. After all, he’s only on a fishing boat somewhere north of Scotland—a piece of cake, right?

Not on this boat that’s fishing in near-hurricane conditions, with a sleep-deprived crew, and O’Hanlon serving as conversational gadfly, a walking occupational hazard, and comic relief. This is Fear and Loathing on the open sea, with photographs providing testimony that this crazed and funny voyage is cold, hard truth. -J. Brown

A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit
by Alan Lightman (Pantheon)

These essays provide insight into the mind of the author who conveyed the poetry in quantum physics in the wonderful Einstein’s Dreams. They cover a wide variety of topics: a childhood obsession with building and taking things apart; the thrill of scientific discovery; the creative urge inherent in art and science; reflections on famous scientists and how their choices and beliefs shaped their careers; approaching middle age and the soul’s fate in a fast-paced world. Lightman’s humility, wit, and intellect shine throughout. -V. Verano

The Lost German Slave Girl
by John Bailey (Atlantic Monthly Press)

In The Lost German Slave Girl, the true story of Sally Miller, a New Orleans slave woman who sued for her freedom by claiming that she was a wrongfully enslaved German immigrant and not a light-skinned but legal slave, is used to illustrate the elaborate and terrible web of laws and customs that maintained the distance between enslaved and free. This is a detailed and interesting account, not only of the intertwined histories and bloodlines of slaves and slaveholders, but also of mid-nineteenth-century American courts. -K.M. Allman

Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe
by Simon Singh (Fourth Estate)

Singh takes a fresh and delightfully accessible look at the Big Bang. Divided into five chapters, the story starts back when philosophers began to explain the universe in natural instead of supernatural terms, moving through relativity and the massive telescopes which give us a glimpse of the edge of the universe. Along the way, we meet the brilliant minds that have led us to this glorious model of the universe. Whether you have read nothing or a hundred books on this topic, you will gain fresh perspective and insight, and quite possibly inspiration. -H. Myers

Children's & Young Adult Books

The Time Hackers
by Gary Paulsen (Wendy Lamb)

No seventh grader ever expects to find a rotting cadaver in his locker, but that is exactly what Dorso Clayman finds. It’s not the first time something like this has happened, either. Dorso and his buddy Frank surmise that somehow, since the advent of the historical hologram projector chip (a way to view history without disturbing the time line) in every laptop, someone has altered Dorso’s computer to play techno-practical jokes. But the joke is over when Dorso and Frank start to emerge in history at potentially deadly moments. -H. Myers

Long Night Moon
by Cynthia Rylant
illus. by Mark Siegel (Walker)

When we’re children, we’re afraid of the dark. As adults, we find that long winter nights bring Seasonal Affective Disorder. We need help, if we’re going to live in the Pacific Northwest.

And help is here, now that we have Cynthia Rylant’s new picture book. Adapting the Native American tradition of naming each full moon, Rylant celebrates a lunar year in a peaceful and soothing poem. Mark Siegel’s illustrations of the mystery and beauty of moonlit nights blend wonderfully with Rylant’s luminous text. Together they’ve created a sure cure for a child’s night fears or an adult’s winter gloom. -J. Brown

The Librarian Of Basra: A True Story from Iraq
by Jeanette Winter (Harcourt)

This true story, first reported in The New York Times, describes how 30,000 books and periodicals were rescued from Basra’s Central Library by its devoted chief librarian. Alia Muhammad Baker spirited the volumes out of the library over a seven-foot wall, to a back room of a neighboring restaurant, and from there into trucks and her own car to carry them to her home. The vivid picture-book format of this amazing story is not used solely to make it accessible to children, but to ensure that its powerful message can be understood by all readers. -H. Myers

Last Shot: A Final Four Mystery
by John Feinstein (Knopf)

Thirteen-year-old Stevie Thomas has won a prestigious writing award that gives him the ultimate insider’s pass to the Final Four in New Orleans. But it is not the weekend Stevie has dreamed of, after he overhears one of the players being blackmailed to throw the big game. Now he and his friend Susan Carol must put a stop to this plot. Basketball fans will revel in the name dropping and sports minutiae, and nonfans will be pulled in by the fast-paced action and quick-thinking young heroes. -H. Myers