New Fiction

The Cigar Roller
by Pablo Medina (Grove)

This new book by noted novelist and poet Pablo Medina takes the reader into the suffocating life of a Cuban cigar roller, unable to move or speak after a stroke has left him paralyzed at a hospital in Florida. His absent children and wife haunt him from his past, while a nurse and a nun control his present. Medina uses his strong, poetic voice to travel back and forth between the unmoving body and the bright memories of its youth. It's like reading inside a memory, purposefully confusing but ultimately satisfying when readers realize they know the cigar roller intimately. -A.P. King

The Bones
by Seth Greenland (Bloomsbury)

At some point in our lives we all make bad career decisions. It's human nature. That said, it's never a good idea, even if you are a stand-up comedian, to wave a loaded gun at your audience, especially if you are loaded on tequila. So begins Seth Greenland's debut novel, the hilarious story of what is handed to you when you are scraping bottom and have absolutely nothing to lose. Greenland moves us effortlessly and with a comic's precise timing through the bizarre misadventures of Frankie Bones, the gun-wielding bad-boy comic, who's paying strangely for being down and out. -C. Joyner

The Cemetery of Chua Village
by Doan Le (Curbstone)

Doan Le's versatility in short fiction makes her a true master of the form. The ten pieces in this collection are all unique prisms through which life in contemporary Vietnam is focused and refracted. The resultant spectrum is as varied and illuminating as any rainbow. With a deep intimacy, humor, allegory, and magical realism, Le has created in this collection a perfect snapshot of life in her country in this time of immense change. -T. Lennon

The Lost Mother
by Mary McGarry Morris (Viking)

The time is the Great Depression; the characters are the "haves" and the "have-nots." The Talcotts, father Henry and children Thomas and Margaret, are the "have-nots," with no home, no work, no prospects, and no mother Irene. On the other hand, the Farleys seem to have it all—much of it once the Talcotts'—and now it seems Mrs. Farley will go to great lengths to make the Talcott children hers as well. Desolate characters roam this bleak landscape, which ultimately leads us to all that makes us so fragile, so human. -H. Myers

Nice Big American Baby
by Judy Budnitz (Knopf)

It's hard to review a collection of stories like these, filled with so many weird and wonderful images and thoughts. Budnitz's stories skirt the edge of menace, giving you that nervous-chuckle sensation. The straightforwardness of the prose is subversive, allowing the author to weave in and out of absurdity and surrealism without losing her audience. But these are not frivolous inventions; each story leaves you slightly shaken, pondering the complexities of love, war, paranoia, death, youth, morality, and politics. These stories are rich in meaning, peppered with many strange and unforgettable scenes, and proof that the short story form is as vibrant as it ever was. -V. Verano

A Thread of Grace
by Mary Doria Russell (Random House)

Science fiction writer Mary Doria Russell's first historical fiction is a great success. Following Mussolini's surrender, Jews fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe poured into the mountains of northern Italy. The ensuing German occupation of Italy spelled death for Jewish families and anyone caught aiding them in even the smallest ways. Russell's novel effectively depicts the horror of this period in human history with a tale that demonstrates the height of compassion as neighbors set aside their differences to help one another. A Thread of Grace starts slowly but builds to a story that makes readers feel as though they are living in the hills, struggling to survive. -K. Markowitz

A Changed Man
by Francine Prose (HarperCollins)

Francine Prose, a National Book Award finalist, has crafted a brilliantly unsettling novel that will soon have her in the spotlight again. This novel revolves around a neo-Nazi who claims to have had a recent change of heart while attending a rave; however, that story (and many of his others) morphs over the course of the novel. He offers the product of his newly directed energies to a prestigious organization not unlike Amnesty International. Prose ingeniously places you on the shoulder of each character, never hinting which shoulders are connected to the knees that will buckle and send you toppling downward. -C. Joyner

Tamburlaine Must Die
by Louise Welsh (Canongate)

In Louise Welsh's new novella, we follow Christopher Marlowe through the three days before his untimely and mysterious death in a tavern brawl. Someone has assumed the identity of Marlowe's most famous character, Tamburlaine. Court intrigue plays a central role in Welsh's story. Kit's life is in the hands of the Privy Council. This is the stuff of Elizabethan revenge tragedy. He must solve this mystery if he expects to live another day—we of course know he won't live for long. We may never know why Marlowe died; we are left with how. -G. Berry

The Moon in Our Hands
by Thomas Dyja (Avalon)

Based on actual events from our country's past, The Moon in Our Hands attacks the issues of race and identity in true literary style. With a smooth storytelling voice, Dyja introduces the reader to the world of Walter White, a blond, fair-skinned African American, who travels to Tennessee to investigate a lynching for the N.A.A.C.P in 1918. Being found out is the least of White's worries, as the story quickly moves into a life-or-death situation. Stunning to read, this book will make the reader reevaluate his or her own identity, much as Walter White must to save himself. -A.P. King

The Year of Our War
by Steph Swainston (Eos)

Jant is one of just fifty immortals chosen to aid the various races of his world against the insurgence of the vicious Insects. Jant is also a junkie and a coward. Alliances fall apart at the most critical time and Jant, slowly giving in to his addiction, watches as the Insects overrun the land. Can he save himself and his world at the same time? Swainston's novel is a refreshing addition to the recent fantasy literature moving out from under the shadow of the edifice that is Tolkien's Middle-earth. It's shocking, singularly inventive, and odd in the very best sense. -V. Verano

Milk
by Darcey Steinke (Bloomsbury)

It's hard to decide which facet of this book flashes itself onto the screen of memory weeks after reading. At first it seems like a fairly straightforward read, a tale told in sections, each devoted to a main character with a societal button to push. A fledgling mother, recently separated, falls into the arms of a disavowed monk and the roles of prayer are reversed. A gay priest mourns the loss of his lover and finds obsession with an exact opposite. This tale defiantly weaves itself, sinking its claws into the tight fabric of religion and sexuality. -C. Joyner

Drives Like a Dream
by Porter Shreve (Houghton Mifflin)

Throughout my life I've heard all the insipid "self help" catch phrases: "Hang in there," "Chin up," "Things can only get better," "You're only as young as you feel." I took these statements at face value and went about my day. Of course, I'm not Lydia Modine, a sixty-one- year-old whose life needs to have its training wheels reattached. Her ex-husband is remarrying someone young enough to be her daughter, her children are gone, and she's suffering writer's block. But light appears at the end of this viciously funny novel's tunnel and it's well worth the drive. -C. Joyner

This Life She's Chosen
by Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum (Chronicle)

Each of the stories collected here looks at women in focal moments in their personal histories. The title story introduces a newly wed daughter and her physically and emotionally distant mother who has come to inspect her son-in-law and her daughter's new life. "The Picnic" is the story of Martha, her daughter Leigh, and sister Vivian, as they wander the park, prepare for a picnic, and once again note their vast differences. Like a pint of gourmet ice cream, these stories can be fully enjoyed in single or multiple servings. -H. Myers

Acqua Calda
by Keith McDermott (Carroll & Graf)

Gerald is an actor who has found his life on hold and is near death's door, when miracle drugs come along that stabilize his health. AIDS has caused him to withdraw from life. It is at this moment that a charismatic, avant-garde, Robert Wilsonesque director, William Weiss, invites Gerald to join him for a new production in Sicily.

McDermott has written an engaging portrait of the theatre. The hot springs of the title and the love of theatre lift Gerald up and let him fly one more time. -G. Berry

New Nonfiction

The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life
by Tom Reiss (Random House)

A Jewish oil millionaire's son escapes the Russian revolution via camel caravan, converts to Islam, and reinvents himself as Essad Bey (aka Kurban Said), "Muslim prince," and renowned novelist. New Yorker writer Tom Reiss's account of this elusive man and his unlikely connections with the architects of the Russian Revolution, the professional "orientalists" of his time, and with world literary and political figures including Stalin and Mussolini is incredible, thoughtful, and impossible to put down. -K.M. Allman.

Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend
by Mitchell Zuckoff (Random House)

Do you want to get rich quick? It is still the American way for many people, as it was in 1920, when the Ponzi scheme became one of the more famous ways to make easy money. Its name even made its way into the Oxford English Dictionary. Mitchell Zuckoff writes a fascinating account of the rise and fall of the scheme's creator: immigrant Charles Ponzi. Beloved and worshipped by many, yet hounded by reporters and the law, Ponzi's life and scheme are richly detailed in this forgotten piece of American history. -C. Kirchner

Orphans: Essays
by Charles D'Ambrosio (Clear Cut Press)

This is the finest book I've read in years. These essays about whale hunting, about the composition and creation of bricks, about diction and syntax, and about orphans, leave the reader gratefully awed. D'Ambrosio's language is imaginative and masterful, and the sentences ring with taut, perfect pitch. He is an equilibrist whose incisiveness rests on the exact balance point of each story, turning the map of the familiar upside down and showing us details we never quite saw before. This is excellent reportage, and this is a brilliant mind loaning us his eyes, re-creating us, breathless and changed. -P. Constant

Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood
by Koren Zailckas (Viking)

TThose who believe you can't find clarity at the bottom of a bottle may want to change their school of thought (maybe they haven't seen the bottom of enough bottles). It's possible that you can't understand real clarity unless you've allowed yourself to get fuzzy around the edges. Zailckas plunges us deeply into drunken oblivion using intoxicatingly poetic language, illuminating almost every page with breath-clenching insights into her freefall to binge drinking (from her first drink at fourteen to her last almost ten years later). It's an astonishing memoir that analyzes the comforting embrace of the common cocktail. -C. Joyner

Land of Ghosts: The Braided Lives of People and the Forest in Far Western Amazonia
by David G. Campbell (Houghton Mifflin)

One of the important themes that comes across in this account of Campbell's trip up the Amazon is his unwavering love for a place he calls an "apex of human diversity." While he is writing about the handful of humans who call these jungles home, from natives to scientists, he is also talking about the myriad of species found there.

Campbell doesn't hide his scientific background. In fact, his complete knowledge of things is part of his charm. In spite of his love for the region, the journey is rough, and Campbell is refreshingly honest in recounting it. -A.P. King

First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea
by Paul Woodruff (Oxford University Press)

There couldn't be a more appropriate time to reexamine Athenian democracy, given that the United States purports to be exporting "democracy" as if it were a commodity. Woodruff explores seven ideas in his book: freedom from tyranny, harmony, the rule of law, natural equality, citizen wisdom, reasoning without knowledge, and general education. You may be surprised to learn that the following are decidedly undemocratic: voting by itself, majority rule, and elected representation; all create serious problems. Woodruff asks the vital question: what can the U.S. learn from Athens? -G. Berry

Leaving the Saints: How I Left the Mormons and Found My Faith
by Martha Beck (Crown)

If you're not a supporter of organized religion that guards its secrets and refutes all who question its faith, this memoir is for you. Martha Beck, author of Expecting Adam, returns to her hometown of Provo, Utah, after her son, Adam, is born with Down syndrome. It is within this community that she knows Adam will be unquestioningly accepted and will not grow up stigmatized. It is also on this return that Martha comes to terms with a father who abused her and a community that covers up its problems and shuns those who question. -T. Taylor

February House
by Sherill Tippins (Houghton Mifflin)

One's first impression after reading February House is that life is extremely messy. This true account of a house, circa 1941, filled to the brim with personalities, including W. H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Carson McCullers, and Gypsy Rose Lee, is full of gory details and is better for it. But in addition to a healthy dose of romance, dysfunction, and alcohol, Tippin's book provides us with a meditation on the role of art in wartime, as W. H. Auden and company struggle with how to respond to Hitler's Germany and the death and destruction of World War II. -M. Helsel

True North: Peary, Cook and the Race to the Pole
by Bruce Henderson (Norton)

When I was in grade school, my social studies teacher taught that the North Pole had first been discovered by U.S. Naval Commander Robert E. Peary in 1909.

In this book, author Bruce Henderson constructs a rich and engaging narrative out of the stories of two explorers—Frederick A. Cook and Robert E. Peary—both of whom laid claim to discovering the North Pole, the crown jewel of exploration at the turn of the century. I won't give away the story, but I think my social studies teacher was mistaken. -M. Voss

The Language of Baklava
by Diana Abu-Jaber (Pantheon)

Novelist Diana Abu-Jaber's funny, poignant, and flavorful memoir of her childhood in Jordan and upstate New York challenges the stereotype of the one-dimensional suburban childhood. Sumptuous recipes accompany equally sumptuous stories about such joys as eating crispy shrimp with almonds with her opera-loving, culturally confused grandmother, tasting luscious stuffed cabbages with her friend's Holocaust-survivor father, and smelling lamb-stuffed squash made by her father to lure his runaway daughters home. All roads (and many dishes) ultimately lead this colorful, rebellious girl back to her complex and loving family. -K.M. Allman

Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel
by Rebecca Goldstein (Atlas)

The term "misunderstood genius" finds its perfect example in the life of mathematician/logician Kurt Gödel. Intensely secretive, his private life is more inscrutable than the Incompleteness proofs he developed in the 1930s. Gödel interacted with some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, including Wittgenstein, Oppenheimer, and Einstein. Goldstein captures the quiet brilliance and eccentric outlook of the man who single-handedly revolutionized mathematics, quantum physics, and philosophy, infusing the book with great sympathy and humor while streamlining the science to make the book accessible to a wider audience. -V. Verano

Field Notes on the Compassionate Life: A Search for the Soul of Kindness
by Marc Ian Barasch (Rodale)

Compassion. What is it? What must one do to lead a life of compassion? Barasch quotes the great Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." This serves as a reminder that all people, no matter their circumstances, suffer. Barasch explores the phenomenon of compassion through many paths: neuroscience, biology, and the great religious and philosophical traditions. Making another's suffering our own through compassion can indeed change the world around us. -G. Berry

The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism, and Transgender Rights
by Deborah Rudacille (Pantheon)

In this much-anticipated work, Rudacille takes the reader on a detailed journey through transgender history, issues, and stories. A science writer first and foremost, she did detailed research into the history of sex and gender issues and recounts much of what she learns in an easy, accessible manner. During her research she encountered many transgendered people who welcomed her into their lives and told their stories. These stories are in the book, too, and this is where it truly shines. It's a combination of factual science and real-life stories, and will become an important tool in transgender education. -A.P. King

Children at War
by P. W. Singer (Pantheon)

"We just fought. We didn't know our ages," says one child soldier quoted in P. W. Singer's Children at War. This heartbreaking, infuriating, and important book reports on a growing number of conflicts fought by child soldiers as young as six, in which heavy civilian casualties and war atrocities are commonplace. Singer not only describes the social conditions that feed the war and the means (cheap, imported AK-47 rifles and mines) by which the wars are fought but also reports on the successful rehabilitation of child soldiers. -K.M. Allman

The Turbulent Decade: Confronting the Refugee Crisis of the 1990s
by Sadako Ogata (Norton)

This is the story of the refugee experience from the bird's-eye view of the bureaucrat whose decisions affected the lives of millions daily. From 1991 to 2000 Sadako Ogata served as UN High Commissioner for Refugees. During her tenure UNHCR would be called to respond to numerous crises that did not fit the traditional profile of its mandate. Ogata retooled her bureaucracy to meet the challenges of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and failed states in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, the Great Lakes region and elsewhere. -T. Lennon

Ghosts in the Garden
by Beth Kephart (New World Library)

The essays collected here are like cherry blossoms in early spring; they are radiant, intense, and all too brief in their splendor. Walking the Chanticleer garden near her home in Pennsylvania, Kephart, facing midlife, began to ask "What happens with the next portion of my life?" But her ponderings on aging, identity, and purpose are universal. And just like a garden, the metaphor of lush, prominent cycles of beginnings and endings is simply perfect for contemplation. -H. Myers

Without a Net
by Michelle Kennedy (Viking)

Homelessness in our rich country is ignored, hidden, and everywhere. Michelle Kennedy's book illustrates all these aspects of this pervasive social problem with the urgency and heart that come from experience; the story she tells is her own. Her account of three months spent working in a bar, feeding, clothing, and parenting three children—while living with them in her 1978 Subaru—will pull you in like a well-plotted novel, but Kennedy is too skillful a writer to let you forget the sweat that provided the "plot." -M. Helsel

The Owner's Box

by Peter Aaron

To begin, a confession: I'm going to write about a book I haven't even read yet. But the forthcoming (February) publication of a new translation by John E. Woods of Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers (Everyman's Library) is an event bringing together three of my literary passions: Mann, the ideal marriage of author and translator, and great behemoths of novels.

Mann's The Magic Mountain occupies a permanent number-one slot in my list of favorite novels—and I'm not sure I can explain why. From the first time I read it—in a not-very-good translation—I was captivated. It moves at a glacial pace. There's relatively little "action." There are long, withering passages of conversation, or worse, philosophical discourse. And yet I love every page, every word of it—probably because it's so true—not to be confused with realistic. True not necessarily in the sense of the believability (and certainly not the mannerisms, which are archly stilted) of the characters' behavior, speech, and interaction; but rather, true in terms of the psychological reality of the "types" they represent. And the detail, the meticulous attention to every taste, sound, fashion, every nuance of class and prejudice and posture.

Set in a Swiss sanitarium just prior to the outset of World War I, Mann's masterpiece somehow conveys an understanding of the breakdown of European governance and culture that created the conditions leading to that war, setting the stage for the second World War, and the nonstop bloodshed ever since, without ever hinting at politics or history. And then, to encounter Mann's prose in the skillful hands of translator Woods was like seeing in daylight a great painting which previously could be viewed only in the dark. At over 700 pages, The Magic Mountain is no lightweight in the voluminous category either.

In addition to The Magic Mountain, Woods has previously translated Mann's Buddenbrooks and Doctor Faustus (all three from Vintage). And now Joseph, the most recent "collaboration," which combines in one 1,500-page tome Mann's four sequential novels, comprising a unified narrative of Joseph's fall into slavery and subsequent rise as lord over Egypt. The books, in any form, have been out of print in this country for at least a decade—probably a reflection of the turgidity of previous translations and the fact that these are among the least "accessible" of a not particularly accessible author's works. Couldn't suit me better—I know how I'll be spending my nights in February—and beyond.

Poetry

Where Shall I Wander
by John Ashbery (Ecco)

John Ashbery's Where Shall I Wander isn't really a question about where to go, but about getting over having a destination. Drifting between the everyday and reverie, these playful narrations have a dark (but unmistakably perceptive) underbelly. Sharp and wryly sarcastic, here's a book where little lyrical jabs hit the sublime and register "out of the deep business of some dream." Ashbery has proven again that he's able to deliver poetry that is smart, enigmatic, and mischievously entertaining. -D. Kunz

Children's & Young Adult Books

The Magician's Boy
by Susan Cooper
illus. by Serena Riglietti (McElderry Books)

The boy who works as the magician's assistant wants nothing more than to learn magic. He makes do with operating the puppets in the magician's play, but one day during a show the star of the play, Saint George, is nowhere to be found. The magician suddenly casts the boy off into a world of fable and he is sent on a quest to rescue Saint George. He encounters many familiar characters, including Little Red Riding Hood and the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.

Newbery Award medalist Susan Cooper captures young imaginations by revisiting some classic fairy tales. -C. Reid

A Boy and His Bunny
by Sean Bryan
illus. by Tom Murphy (Arcade)

This lighthearted and fun new picture book is sure to please all. Now try to follow the plot: a boy wakes up with a bunny on his head. Is he annoyed or frustrated having this floppy-eared pouf ball permanently stuck on his head? Of course not! This boy loves his bunny and it's sure a lot better than what's on top of his sister's head.

Tom Murphy's unique sketches blend perfectly with Bryan's simple story, making this appropriate for the youngest of audiences. -C. Reid

Never Cry Woof!
by Jane Wattenberg (Scholastic)

After answering an ad in the help-wanted section for guard dogs, Bix and Hunky-Dory move to the "sheepburbs." Hunky-Dory knows the shepherding Golden Rules but Bix gets bored and lonely with all those sheep, rams and little lambs, and he cries "WOLF". Naturally the other sentry dogs come running, only to find Bix out of line, not once but twice, with no wolves in sight. This rollicking, rhyming, funny, and pun-ny adaption of Aesop's old fable with its photo montage and poochie collage illustration will charm and delight. -H. Myers

Looking For Alaska
by John Green (Dutton)

Sixteen-year-old Miles Halter is leaving his safe, tired, dull home life for Culver Creek, a boarding school in Alabama. "Pudge," as he is nicknamed, has come searching for "the Great Perhaps," which he finds with new friends who have a penchant for pranks. He also discovers drinking, smoking, and of course love with the witty, tragic, and beautiful Alaska Young. This is a very sophisticated novel which, while starring a young cast, is definitely a bridge to adult themes and meant for a mature audience. -H. Myers

Back Talk

by Janet Brown

Twenty years ago I opened a book, read "It happened by the grace of God that Joseph Santangelo won his wife in a card game," and fell in love with Household Saints, by Francine Prose. It's a wonderful mixture of New York street smarts and Italian mysticism, and rereading it in 2005, I love it still.

We're able to read it today because it's part of our backlist, one of those titles that nourish our store, the books that continue to sell decades after they first came into print. We receive new books hoping that they will become backlist. New books are celebrated; backlist is loved.

Many of the authors whose latest books are featured in this month's Booknotes have backlist titles on our shelves. David Campbell's picture of the multicolored Antarctic ice in Crystal Desert, the dark vision of Mary McGarry Morris's Vanished, Darcey Steinke's chilling Suicide Blonde are here. So is Susan Cooper's classic children's fantasy, the Dark Is Rising series, and Rebecca Goldstein's witty novel that blends philosophy and female preoccupations in The Mind-Body Problem. Louise Welsh's The Cutting Room and Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow are novels that have spent time on our Staff Recommends display. Other favorites are Martha Beck's maternal memoir Expecting Adam, Diana Abu-Jaber's novel Crescent, and Charles D'Ambrosio's stories in The Point, showing Seattle as it used to be, not so long ago.

These books and many others can be found in the heart of our store, deep in the backlist of the Elliott Bay Book Company.