New Fiction

Sacred Games
by Vikram Chandra (HarperCollins)

Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and slowly immerse yourself into Bombay. Don't worry; it will take mere moments for you to acclimatize. After a sentence or two, you will be sniffing at a swirling array of appetite-entrancing odors as you navigate your way through the noisy, bustling streets. A few paragraphs more and you'll be bantering in local jargon and humming some Mohammad Rafi number. After a few pages, you will have met Ganesh Gaitonde, and by then, my friend, it will be too late for you. Just don't trust anyone, and take cover when the bullets start to fly. -J. Zaidi

Travels in the Scriptorium
by Paul Auster (Henry Holt)

Mr. Blank awakens in a room with not a single memory of his past life. Uncertain about his freedom, the old man notices an obscure manuscript and set of chilling photographs. From these bare objects, his mind recalls a murky past and his place in it. His recollections are interrupted by visits from various people shrouded in the hazy past. Auster writes like a skilled cameraman, focusing and then refocusing the reader's eye. His new novel utilizes that incredible skill and flips the easy, expected mystery into a much more complex tale. -R. Mita

Arlington Park
by Rachel Cusk (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Mrs. Dalloway meets Desperate Housewives in this brilliant ensemble novel. Set over the course of a single day, the story begins with a relentless rainstorm that beats upon the well-to-do, benign, and orderly London suburb of Arlington Park, infiltrating dreams and causing a strange unrest. Shifting among the households of seven young mothers, and ending with a drunken dinner party, Cusk trains a savagely comic eye on the dark undercurrents of domestic life, the limits of prosperity, and the price of perfection. Anyone who's experienced the quiet desperation of a perfect living room will love this book. -L. Paus

Andy Catlett: Early Travels
by Wendell Berry (Shoemaker & Hoard)

Andy Catlett tells of his first solitary journey, as a nine-year-old boy, to World War II–era Port William, Kentucky, where he helps his grandfather strip tobacco and his grandmother cook biscuits. Here, Berry has crafted a character so intimate that readers envy him, seeing a man who carries a distant culture between his thoughts. Through late-night card games, home-cooked suppers, stories from former slaves, and the talk of men in the tobacco-stripping room, Andy Catlett invites us to remember an agrarian America of self-reliance and community accountability, not yet irretrievable. -T. Radebaugh

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name
by Vendela Vida (Ecco)

Clarissa Iverton is adrift: her mother vanished when Clarissa was fourteen, her brother has never spoken, and on the evening of her father's funeral, she learns not only that he wasn't her biological father, but that her fiancé has kept this fact from her for years. Her search for answers takes her to Lapland, where she finds that the truths we seek are not always restorative.

Vida's spellbinding prose tunnels ahead unstoppably, slowed only by the pauses her disarming observations demand. This is a book with a temperature—by turns starkly cold and staggeringly warm, but always potent, truthful, bright. -E. Staudt

Surveillance
by Jonathan Raban (Pantheon)

An eerily familiar dread of waning freedoms and a terrorism-obsessed state hang over Raban's new novel of Seattle in the not-too-distant future. Among checkpoints and emergency drills, journalist Lucy Bengstrom has been given the assignment of a lifetime: to seek out and interview the reclusive author of the famed Holocaust memoir Boy 381. As Lucy uncovers more about the author and comes face to face with his politics, she discovers that he may not be all that he seems. Unsettling and rich in character, Surveillance is an engrossing book, and is not just for the paranoid. -C. Stryer

Ten Days in the Hills
by Jane Smiley (Knopf)

Welcome to the family reunion, Hollywood style. Our host, afflicted with war-induced erectile dysfunction, is Oscar winner Max Maxwell. He and his girlfriend, a hypersensitive self-help author, invite you to discuss current events and film over fresh sliced pineapple by the pool. The beautiful actress Zoe Cunningham will be there with her guru boyfriend, who breakfasts on organ meats. And of course the agent will be there; did you know he's been sleeping with Max's daughter since she was sixteen? Please RSVP for all the politically correct excess you could ever desire. -J. Darrah

The Castle in the Forest
by Norman Mailer (Random House)

Even if Hitler isn't your cup of tea, it's still worth pleasantly startling yourself with this book. The narrator comforts you for feeling squeamish about rejoicing and despairing with young Adi, as it is only natural to become engrossed in a character's life. And indeed it is a captivating story. The average biography merely glosses over Hitler's heritage and young life, but Mailer's narrator informs you of the most intimate details, and you will feel as if you too are part of the innermost circle, good v. evil, taking part in the upbringing of the greatest monster of our time. -L. Redinger

Petropolis
by Anya Ulinich (Viking)

After she becomes pregnant by the local nihilist at the age of fourteen and her mother confiscates the baby, Sasha Goldberg (chubby, biracial, and Jewish) begins the journey from her hometown of Asbestos 2, Siberia, to New York City. Along the way, she goes to art school, becomes a mail-order bride, enters a life of indentured servitude in Chicago, and confronts the father who abandoned her when she was ten. A warmly witty tale that folds American and Russian culture, race, family, and motherhood into its scope, this is a fantastic read—think Borat with heart. -R. Crawford

The Solitude of Thomas Cave
by Georgina Harding (Bloomsbury)

In 1616, Thomas Cave, an impenetrable and stoic man, makes wagers with shipmates of the whaling vessel Heartsease that he can survive one winter on an uncharted arctic island alone. Harding writes a bewitching account of grief, ghosts, cruelty, and the wild. With imagery more horrifying than Heart of Darkness and moments recalling the isolation of Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter, this portrays a man's two irreconcilable views of wilderness as he is torn between whether he should dominate or revere it. Read this aloud before a fire on a dark winter's night. -T. Radebaugh

In the Country of Men
by Hisham Matar (Dial)

Shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, Hisham Matar's debut novel takes place in Libya, ten years after Qaddafi's revolution in 1969. It tells the story of nine-year-old Suleiman, as he struggles to comprehend the world around him. It is a place where men who speak out are hauled from their homes and denounced as traitors and counterrevolutionaries. Public executions are broadcast live as crowds cheer wildly for more. This is a gracefully written book that deals with relationships between people in intimate, realistic, and often tenderhearted ways as their emotions are pulled taut by repression, fear, and hatred. -J. Ditzel

Changing Light
by Nora Gallagher (Pantheon)

An artist seeking solace in a remote New Mexican town gives sanctuary to a stranger in Nora Gallagher's novel. Set in the final days of World War II, Changing Light is partly the story of those who helped create the atomic bomb and then tried to prevent its use, and partly that of a woman rediscovering her art and her capacity to love. Woven into the narrative is an exploration of faith as a component of relationships, spiritual yearning, and creativity, powerful threads in a thoroughly enjoyable and thoughtful novel. -K.M. Allman

Measuring Time
by Helon Habila (Norton)

Twin brothers growing up in a Nigerian village during the 1990s set out to seek their fortunes amid the region's ongoing conflicts in acclaimed writer Helon Habila's novel Measuring Time. One brother, thwarted by the effects of sickle cell anemia, returns home where, after other plans fail, he begins to write his village's history. His brother joins a series of militias and writes his twin letters increasingly filled with horror and bitterness.

The understated beauty and clarity of this novel send the reader deep into the history and experience of the brothers, suggesting reasons behind seemingly incomprehensible motives, conflicts, and actions. -K.M. Allman

Returning to Earth
by Jim Harrison (Grove)

Donald, the central character in Jim Harrison's newest novel, is a forty-five-year-old Chippewa-Finnish man who is dying of Lou Gehrig's disease. He had been a physically powerful man and is now reduced to lying in bed. As he lies there, Donald determines to tell his family story, so it does not become lost with his death. After he dies, Donald's wife, Cynthia, and his two grown children are able to find redemption in their own lives. Harrison has written a compelling and compassionate story that is not to be missed. -G. Berry

The Mathematics of Love
by Emma Darwin (Morrow)

Stephen and Anna—a shell-shocked veteran of the Battle of Waterloo and a sad, lonely teenager in the 1960s—wouldn't seem to have much in common, but the ties that bind them form the emotional backbone of this dreamlike, winding tale. In separate times but the same place, they begin disconnected and alone and then entwine their lives with people who record the world with clear eyes—a draftswoman in Stephen’s case, a photojournalist in Anna’s. Darwin’s evocative writing lifts you out of the present and takes you back to Stephen’s time and into Anna's heart. -R. Crawford

New Non-Fiction

Back on the Fire
by Gary Snyder (Shoemaker & Hoard)

In the fine Beat tradition, Gary Snyder riffs on the heat of environmental destruction and the blaze of regeneration in his new book of essays, Back on the Fire. Connecting ecology, poetry, Buddhism, policy, order, and disorder, this accomplished poet contributes new thinking to the debates over fire in the American West while simultaneously reminiscing about his long history as a conservationist. The book's zenith comes in the "Smokey the Bear Sutra," a wise yet lighthearted teaching that positions Smokey the Bear as a salvific figure for an ecologically unhealthy America. -G.M. Berry

Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis
by Kim Todd (Harcourt)

Chrysalis is both an engaging biography of one of the world's first ecologists and a lively history of entomological lore and the curiosities that abounded in 17th-century Europe. From an early age, Maria Merian was fascinated by the insects she found under leaves and inside flowers in the family garden. In 1699, when she was in her fifties, Merian packed up her life in Amsterdam and sailed to Surinam in order to study exotic caterpillars in their native environment. An accomplished painter, in her time she published several books and was the first to detail the stages of metamorphosis. -J. Darrah

The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts
by Milan Kundera (HarperCollins)

We are born into a preinterpreted world, says Kundera: it is like a curtain hung in front of our eyes. While most people either accept it as the face of reality or rebel against it by turning away, the novelist tears it down. This is both a look at the origins and aesthetics of the European novel, beginning with Don Quixote, whose adventures put the first tear in the curtain, and a self-reflective look at the author's craft. Each part—from The Provincialism of Large Nations to Kitsch and Vulgarity to The Existential Meaning of the Bureaucratized World—is poetic and illuminating. -C. Schwennsen

Alternadad
by Neal Pollack (Pantheon)

Whatever your opinion may be of pop culture critic Neal Pollack, Alternadad is sincere. Pollack's account of conceiving and raising his son Elijah is charming and wholly enjoyable, showcasing the irony of "cool" v. "Dad." It's all fine and good if three guys are fighting over a hooker downtown after a concert, but when they're under your son's bedroom window, "it's time to clean up the neighborhood."

Elijah, from the moment of his circumcision to his love of creepy cartoons, from his experience with a so-called Montessori school to his extracurricular rock 'n' roll education, will steal your heart, but in a hip, "alternative" way. -L. Redinger

Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time
by Rob Sheffield (Crown)

On a sunny May afternoon in 1997, thirty-one-year-old Renee stood up from her sewing and then collapsed, dying instantly from a pulmonary embolism. Rob Sheffield, a longtime Rolling Stone writer, recounts the brief seven years with his wife through a retrospective of the mix tapes they shared. He revisits the bliss of their first Pavement show, the birth of Zima malt beverage, and Kurt Cobain's inevitable suicide. Love Is a Mix Tape is both a comical tribute to nineties music and a long, hard course in grief, kind of like Spice Girls' "Wannabe" meets U2's "One." -J. Darrah

US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man
by Charlie LeDuff (Penguin)

This might seem like a cheerful romp through the absurdities of American masculinity, a look at the nation's buffoonish but lovable inner Homer Simpson. What LeDuff has done is far more inspiring. He peels away the husk of American machismo, revealing the plump kernels of truth that lie beneath. The stories of the men he meets aren't overblown or glamorous; instead it is the blinding brilliance of simple reality that makes each a unique and precious experience.

Every man should read this book to see that he is not alone, and every woman to see what real men are made of. -J. Zaidi

The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe
by Michael Frayn (Metropolitan Books)

Michael Frayn is best known as a playwright and novelist. With The Human Touch, Frayn has taken a philosophical turn, by examining the age-old question: What is the human role in shaping our universe? We in fact, he says, have a paradoxical relationship to our universe; we shape it through our ability to observe and experience it, while the universe goes on despite our presence or lack thereof. Frayn's book is heady, charming, joyful, and intoxicating in expressing the awe-inspiring place humans take in this vast universe. -G. Berry

At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches
by Susan Sontag (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux)

The last nonfiction work partially completed by critic and novelist Susan Sontag during the final months of her life, reflects her wide interests, expertise, and political commitments, including a celebration of Victor Serge, her commentary on Abu Ghraib, and her acceptance speeches for the Friedenspreis and the Oscar Romero Award.

At the heart of the book is the original version of her sorrowful and incendiary post-9/11 New Yorker essay and related interview published in the Italian Newspaper Il Manifesto. Susan Sontag’s incisive writing on such an array of subjects has forever altered how we read and think. -K.M. Allman

Socrates in Love: Philosophy for a Passionate Heart
by Christopher Phillips (Norton)

I have long thought Christopher Phillips has embodied the ideal model of education by embracing the Socratic method. Socrates, who loved truth above all, was sentenced to death for supposedly corrupting the youth of Athens; think of the bumper sticker "Question Authority."

Through Socrates, this book explores the five types of love (eros, storge, xenia, philia, and agape). Once again, Phillips travels far and wide to engage in dialogues with folks of all different backgrounds, in order to find answers to and expressions of these types of love. The dialogues are embodiments of the very ideals he is examining. -G. Berry

Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgendered Teenagers
by Cris Beam (Harcourt)

Christina, Foxxjazell, Ariel, and Domineque are much like any other teenage girls. As the battles for independence and identity wage inside them, they appear superficially occupied by fashion, boys, and music. However, there is one notable difference: they are biologically male. With humor and compassion, Beam recounts the lengths these transgender girls must go to in order to match their outsides to their insides, such as injecting black market hormones or pumping industrial-grade silicone into their hips and breasts. Transparent is a brave book about the hard road to self-acceptance we must all travel, regardless of gender. -J. Darrah

The White Cascade: The Creat Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche
by Gary Krist (Henry Holt)

When Mother Earth and Father Time collaborate, as they are wont to do, the fruits of their labors are sometimes simply shocking. Gary Krist's narrative history of the spring 1910 avalanche in Wellington, Washington, recounts the efforts of railroad superintendent Jim O'Neil as he and others struggled to clear the Great Northern Railway's line through the Cascade mountains during a freak unrelenting snowstorm. Despite their efforts, a tremendous avalanche, falling in the black of night, crushed the immobilized train number 25. What remained scarcely resembled what was there before. It's a tragic, but entirely engaging, account. -D. Evans

Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers
by Amy Stewart (Algonquin)

Did you know that in 1877, many women had a fancy for "thrusting fresh violets in mysterious places about their corsets"? Or that flowers can be bred in test tubes? Amy Stewart takes us on a colorful journey in this fascinating look at all aspects of the global flower industry. From a sweet violet whose beginnings can be traced to a box under the arm of the grower's grandfather from Genoa, to a rose in a remote Ecuadorian greenhouse, to a Dutch flower auction, to an eccentric lily breeder, Stewart offers us an inside peek at the history, culture, and commerce of the blossom. –L. Paus

Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization's End
by Lawrence E. Joseph (Morgan Read Books)

Joseph's book had me laughing from the beginning as he examines and explores the Mayan calendar's prediction of a great catastrophe in 2012. Apocalypse 2012 looks at the scientific evidence for such prognostication. We could be pummeled by comets or cooked by the sun, or we could freeze to death after a supervolcano. There are ecological cataclysms of all stripes to consider as well. However, the heart of the Mayan 2012 prophecies is transformation. What form that takes—if any—we'll just have to wait and see. -G. Berry

Lose Your Mother: a Journey Aling the Atlantic Slave Route
by Saidiya Hartman (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux)

Shaped by the "afterlife of slavery," Saidiya Hartman goes to Ghana to research the slave trade in a place with "more dungeons, prisons, and slave pens than any other country in West Africa." She is one of ten thousand African Americans who travel to Ghana every year in search of a lost mother country, "the tribe of the Middle Passage." As Saidiya explores the history that waits for her there, she examines the history of her own family and the legacy of slavery in the United States in an impassioned, informed, and blazingly honest mixture of memory and discovery. -J. Brown

Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline
by Lisa Margonelli (Talese)

This book reads like a collection of travel essays, in which Lisa Margonelli tells the stories behind the people, places, and processes that bring gasoline to the American consumer. In her travels, Margonelli catches a bit of an oil obsession from the people she meets, as she discovers how fascinating the NYMEX oil market is and how beautiful an oil rig can seem. She also learns about the complications and destructive tendencies that oil money can bring when she visits several oil-producing countries. This is an accessible account of an industry that many Americans would like to know more about. -M. Hickner

The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food is Wrong
by Barry Glassner (Ecco)

For everyone who loves food but is tired of being judged by what they eat, this book offers some intelligent ammunition with which to defend themselves. Glassner's research is extensive, and his main point is that all food is good for you. For every study with evidence against certain foods like soy or butter, or red meat, there are several others that show the benefits. After reading this book, you can officially stop believing anything you hear about food, good or bad. Worrying, rather than enjoying, our food is one of the most unhealthy aspects of the American diet. -L. Redinger

The Qur'an: A Biography
by Bruce Lawrence (Atlantic Monthly Press)

More often than not, the most inspiring and influential pieces of literature begin under the most baffling of circumstances. No one could have predicted that a seventh-century Arab merchant would be the speaking vessel for the poetic angel Gabriel, leading a people to become a prominent religion in the search for God. Lawrence chronologically traces the Qur'an through its interpretations and translations, most interestingly by Rumi and on the origin of the Taj Mahal. Easily read, but challenging, this history serves as an excellent introduction for anyone searching for illumination on one of the most misunderstood texts in world history. -C. Joyner

Children's & Young Adult Books

Cures for Heartbreak
by Margo Rabb (Delacorte)

Mia's mother died days after being diagnosed with melanoma, the funeral director's name was Manny Musico, and the rabbi seemed to double as an Elvis impersonator. Mia's pretty sure that God must be a comedian from the Borscht Belt.

In search of a cure for heartbreak, Mia buys expensive dresses, eats ice cream, reads Anne of Green Gables, goes on a health kick, makes a friend, and eventually, slightly, the wounds begin to lose their raw edge. Margo Rabb understands that high school can hold more heartbreak than boys and cliques provide, and her writing rings painfully—and hilariously—true. -R. Crawford

Un Lun Dun
by China Miéville (Del Rey)

Un Lun Dun is a realm where the obsolete, forgotten, and discarded of London end up. When twelve-year-old Zanna and her friend Deeba arrive there, they encounter a profusion of bizarre residents—animated umbrellas, feral trash, carnivorous giraffes, flying buses, half-ghost children, adventurers with birdcages for heads. It is here an entity called the Smog threatens all, and when the prophesied Chosen One is unable to fulfill her role, can Deeba, the awkward sidekick, take her place?

Miéville creates a memorable heroine, an endlessly inventive and delightfully weird world, and a fable that is at once socially relevant and whimsical. -V. Verano

The New Policeman
by Kate Thompson (Greenwillow)

In the village of Kinvara, or in the whole of Ireland for that matter, there never seems to be enough time. When fifteen-year-old J.J. Liddy promises to find some for his mother's birthday, his gift entails so much more than he imagines. J.J. and all his family hold a long tradition of extraordinary musicianship, but in his quest to find time, J.J. learns that his heritage may hold more than music: his great-grandfather was accused of murder. As J.J. asks questions, he finds magical answers about his family and a connection to Tir na n'Og in this splendid adventure. -H. Myers

The Navigator
by Eoin McNamee (Wendy Lamb)

Imagine waking up to a world where time has slowed, stopped, or even begun to wind backward! In this fantastic tale, the Harsh—cold, ghostlike beings who'd like the world to go back to a time before warmth or people—are fighting against the resistors, including Owen, who wakes up in this time without time to discover that everyone he ever knew has vanished. Owen must solve the mystery surrounding his father's death, as it holds the key to stopping the Harsh for good, and restoring time to its normal rate. The Navigator will make you forget about time! -J. Schurk

A Tribute

by Tracy Taylor

A Remarkable Thirty Years...

One of the employees at Elliott Bay recently passed the anniversary of his thirtieth year at this store. This is remarkable because few people work at one place for thirty years; the store is only thirty-three years old; and this person, Rick Simonson, has been a soft-spoken but constant voice and an influence on the history of Elliott Bay and the publishing world. It therefore seems appropriate to stop and recognize him in our newsletter. Without him, we would not have the amazing reading series that we do, or the broad and eclectic selection of books that our store proudly offers. Rick would be the first to say that the recognition should not be his alone and should rest upon all those currently working here and who have come and gone from our establishment. He would also be the first to say that without support from you, our community, the store, the reading series, and the selection of books would not be possible. He would say these things because they are true and because he has a great deal of humility about his contributions.

What our customers and readers should know is that Rick's work here is about the things we all stand for and believe in when it comes to publishing great books and providing a platform for ideas. He dedicates himself to bringing the community together, and we in Seattle are richer for his contributions. When he comes in the door each day, we never know if he will be accompanied by one of his nieces, or the head of the Seattle Art Museum, or some great new author he’s discovered. We always wonder what wonderful books he has tucked inside his book bag. We’ve heard that he never sleeps and that he reads at all hours of the night. The myth is that he was hired by Walter Carr (our founder) in the alley behind the store late one night when he was taking out the trash at a nearby restaurant where he was a dishwasher. Supposedly, Walter was working late and building shelves when he and Rick formed the now-infamous partnership, and it was there that the store's adventure into author readings was born.

Before Rick, few East Coast publishers sent authors to this area of the country, and regional authors didn’t have a place to read and share their works. When a relatively unknown Amy Tan wrote her first book, she called Rick to say she thought she might like to try a reading. When an unknown writer published his first book of poems, he was welcomed at Elliott Bay. Now Chris Abani is one of the most acclaimed and sought-after young writers in the U.S. It was Rick who carried their books, took a chance, and provided a forum for these and thousands of other authors and readers to come together. In a day and age where what gets published becomes more and more generic, less representative of an evolving culture and more about placement in the big-box chains, Rick continues to ensure all writers are recognized for their literary merit and their contributions to the world of ideas, and that they have a venue for their voices to be heard. Here’s to another thirty years...