New Non-Fiction

The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam
by Tom Bissell (Pantheon)

Tom Bissell, the son of a former Marine and Vietnam veteran, has crafted a poignant memoir that's both travelogue and history book. Recalling the brutality of Vietnam through well-researched chapters, Bissell explores the war and its outcomes and how it shaped his father's life.

It's a beautifully written portrait of a country once ravaged by war, a man who once fought there, and a son struggling to understand the motivations and machinations of a parent. This is a well-realized addition to Vietnam War literature that may begin to help others understand their own fathers in the aftermath of war. –C. Stryer

Dog Years
by Mark Doty (HarperCollins)

Anyone who's looked into a dog's eyes and seen the trust, loyalty, and devotion that reside there will understand that dogs possess the power to heal. Doty, a poet, recounts how the affection of two dogs, Arden and Beau, supported and strengthened him as he had to face down the death of his partner and, later, a mind-numbing depression. This is a beautiful romp with man's best friend, and a lovely look at qualities we humans might do well to adopt: eagerness, a relationship to wildness, unqualified interest, and unconditional acceptance. Doty has given us a profound and life-affirming memoir. -L. Paus

I Am a Strange Loop
by Douglas R. Hofstadter (Basic Books)

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of G&oouml;del, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (Basic Books) is back to turn our heads around, inside out, and back on themselves in this lively investigation into human identity. Hofstadter encourages us to break out of the traditional framework of mind/body and scientific reductionism and see our dynamic selves (the 'I' that thinks, speaks, acts) as 'strange loops.' Full of humor, intellectual bravery, and childlike wonder, this reminds us that the most fascinating philosophical adventures and discoveries take place on what we only thought was familiar soil. -C. Schwennsen

The Desert Remembers My Name: On Family and Writing
by Kathleen J. Alcalá (University of Arizona Press)

This collection of over a decade and a half of writing by Kathleen Alcalá provides valuable insight into the Seattle Chicana writer's deep connections to her family in Mexico, the process of moving from story and research to the writing of fiction, and the ways in which we can use stories to make sense of tragedy and loss. Whether read as an introduction to her work or in addition to her novels and short stories, this book places Alcalá’s work within a rich context of Mexican American writers and unapologetic feminists working to unearth our hidden histories and untold stories. -K.M. Allman

The Violin Maker: Finding a Centuries-Old Tradition in a Brooklyn Workshop
by John Marchese (HarperCollins)

In The Violin Maker, John Marchese documents Sam Zygmuntowicz's meticulous construction of a new violin for the Emerson Quartet's Eugene Drucker. Readers unfamiliar with the esoteric world of fiddle making will discover that even the slightest change in wood thickness or length—mere tenths of a millimeter—can perceptibly alter the sound of an instrument. However, surprisingly little is actually known about what sets a decent instrument apart from a world-class Stradivari. In the end, the process can be likened to Michelangelo’s technique for creating his statue David: carving away that which is not—in this case, the violin. -D. Evans

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
by Atul Gawande (Metropolitan Books)

Atul Gawande has a reputation as the best doctor-writer today. In Better he reinforces that reputation.

Gawande gives an inspiring account of doctors who go beyond the call of duty when they take on worldwide efforts like required scrubbing for doctors, the eradication of polio, and astounding advances in war-time medicine. He covers the most pressing issues today, such as ethical salaries, the lack of insurance, competition for ORs, and lawsuits, and then gives stories of doctors who initiate innovative solutions.

This is required reading for anyone who wants to reclaim medicine as a doctor’s fight for heart and soul. -T. Radebaugh

Edith Wharton
by Hermione Lee (Knopf)

A woman whom Henry James called "The Firebird," whose life was "beautiful, interesting, and damnable," Edith Wharton finished her first novel when she was fifteen, and was working on The Buccaneers when she died at seventy-five. A designer of houses and gardens, a traveler who admonished, "Remember, when you go to a strange country, that its inhabitants have not sent for you," a woman whose divorce shocked society, and whose war work in World War I France netted thousands of dollars and broke her health, Mrs. Wharton had a life so full that containing it in one volume is a stunning achievement. -J. Brown

Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life
by Sari Nusseibeh with Anthony David (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Sari Nusseibeh, President of Al-Quds University, former PLO representative, and son of an illustrious family whose roots reach back thirteen hundred years in Jerusalem's history, shares the story of his life, his family, and some of the history of Palestine in this cautiously hopeful, bittersweet book. Though educated in the West, he married an Englishwoman and raised his family in Jerusalem. An idealist and philosopher who continues his Muslim family's history of friendship with Jews and Christians, he co-founded an Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative with Israeli Ami Ayalon. Through his words, the seeming abstractions of history and politics come alive. -K.M. Allman

Mississippi Sissy
by Kevin Sessums (St. Martin's)

Childhood is never easy. But what if you are a boy who likes twirling in skirts, wants to dress up as Arlene Francis for Halloween, and has an imaginary friend named Epiphany? All this and you are the son of a high-school coach in Mississippi? More than a coming-of-age or coming-out story, Sessum’s memoir is also a defiant look at the xenophobia of the1960s Deep South and a love letter to a colorful cast of mentors he found along the way, among them his Katherine Anne Porter–loving mother, Hollywood and Broadway icons, the journalist Frank Hains, and Eudora Welty. -L. Paus

Freewheeling Planet

by Janet Brown

If Tony Wheeler had a better memory for song lyrics, Lonely Planet wouldn't be the globally recognized synonym for budget travel that it is today. Mangling a Joe Cocker line to sing "this lonely planet" rather than singing the original adjective, "lovely," Wheeler, with the blessing of his partner (and wife) Maureen, gave the altered phrase to their fledgling publishing company, and a star was born.

Blending their collective talents is a way of life for the Wheelers, so it's no surprise that they have collaborated once more when writing Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story (Periplus). A story of their life together, as well as of the business empire that they created, this book is personally revealing, funny, and full of information for travelers, writers, and entrepreneurs. Whether they tell about scams in Thailand, the effects of 9/11 on the travel industry, or the difficulties of blending a family and a business, Maureen and Tony make their readers feel as though they're involved in a beer-infused chat with good friends.

Proving that his spirit of adventure hasn't been drowned by corporate decisions, Tony Wheeler has gone to the 21st century's unexplored territory: the Axis of Evil and other pariah nations. Writing about nine countries where most tourists fear to tread, Tony gives a candid and objective view in Tony Wheeler's Bad Lands (Lonely Planet), while confessing, "I am careful, cautious, and have a low tolerance of pain."

"It's supposed to be a guide, not a blueprint," Tony says, and applauds those travelers who use a Lonely Planet guide as "a list of places not to stay in." It's that sort of irreverent humor that makes the Wheelers still a force to be reckoned with, "Still crazy ofter all these years."

New Fiction

Burning Bright
by Tracy Chevalier (Dutton)

Absorbing, rife with historical detail, and nary an anachronism in sight: These are the hallmarks of Tracy Chevalier's work. Once more, she melds historical fact and fiction seamlessly, as two London children—a saucy city girl named Maggie and a displaced country boy named Jem—find a mentor in the artist and poet William Blake. The marvel of Chevalier's writing lies in her ability to place readers in the past (in this case, the raucous, vibrant, smelly streets of London in 1792) and steal them away from the gray, drizzly skies of wherever they happen to be. -R. Crawford

A Tranquil Star
by Primo Levi
trans. by Ann Goldstein and Alessandra Bastagli (Norton)

Italo Calvino called Primo Levi one of the most important and gifted writers of our time, and nowhere is this more evident than in this newly translated short-story collection. Levi's stories range from the fantastical (a man is charged with discovering the ingredients to a paint that brings good luck) to the fevered desperation of war (a captured soldier struggles with the decision of setting off a grenade dangling on a German soldier's belt).

Told with a lyrical wit, Levi's stories show an intense understanding of the hypocrisy and fragility of life and the exhilaration of just being alive. -C. Stryer

April in Paris
by Michael Wallner (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)

After a furtive change out of his heavy boots and into a worn, checked suit, young German soldier Roth is transformed into Antoine, a French student who falls for Chantal, a Resistance fighter. While on duty, a detached Roth translates as SS officers interrogate and torture; off-duty, he wanders through Paris, love-struck, wishing his other self into being, and hoping to encounter Chantal.

What will become of Roth when his superiors learn he's keeping company with the enemy? What will Chantal do when she learns her lover is her enemy? Told with urgency and grace, April in Paris is a luminous, unforgettable work. -E. Staudt

You Don't Love Me Yet
by Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday)

Lethem returns with a clever, sexually charged novel whose characters include brilliant, ultra-cool, and mostly insane artist types plus a liberated marsupial. It’s very Warhol.

For the sake of the band they’ll stay friends, of course, but Lucinda and Matthew are calling it quits, and this time they mean it. Lucinda (barista no more!) has her new job at the gallery answering calls from self-absorbed complainers all over Los Angeles. Matthew has the minor complication of sharing his apartment with Shelf the kangaroo to occupy his downtime. There will be no more moments of weakness, but plenty of funny business. -J. Darrah

The Visible World
by Mark Slouka (Houghton Mifflin)

This masterful novel focuses on a nameless character desperately attempting to understand his parents’ past, particularly his mother’s, whose lover had been killed in Czechoslovakia during World War II. The story is broken into three sections—the first, a child’s memory of his parents; the second, an adult’s reconstruction of his parents’ history; and the third, a fictionalization of his mother’s affair, based on what is known of her and her lover. The Visible World is a beautifully written and poetic tale about a love that lasts and a loss that is inherited. -J. Ditzel

The Custodian of Paradise
by Wayne Johnston (Norton)

Sheilagh Fielding is a sharp-tongued journalist, a character of imposing force, standing over six feet tall, with a limp and a prodigious taste for scotch and cigarettes. As World War II is nearing the end, Sheilagh exiles herself to an island off the coast of Newfoundland to write a book, with only the company of some wild dogs and horses. She is shadowed by a man we only know as the Provider, who knows Sheilagh’s secrets. It is a rare treat in literature to encounter a character as unforgettable as Sheilagh, written so masterfully. -G. Berry

Grotesque
by Natsuo Kirino (Knopf)

This engrossing novel opens with the brutal murders of two Tokyo prostitutes, but this is not your typical murder mystery. The events leading to the killings are related from a variety of viewpoints, all of them equally unreliable, and the intertwined stories of victims and killer(s) present Japanese society from varying perspectives in a structure reminiscent of Kurosawa's Rashomon. Like the film, this novel is a rich, rewarding, and revealing experience. Be prepared for a book utterly unlike anything you're used to in crime fiction: a long, densely written book that has more in common with Dostoyevsky than Dan Brown. -M. Voss

The Savage Detectives
by Roberto Bolaño
trans. by Natasha Wimmer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

In the dark of a Mexican New Year’s Eve, two young poets smuggle a prostitute from the clutches of her dangerous pimp. This is the beginning of an odyssey that will take the men across continents and decades and through the lives of many lively characters along the way. The narrative is formed by the journal entries of those who the poets meet in their journey, each of which Bolaño has painstakingly bestowed with an entirely distinct voice. When pieced together these journals create a sharply outlined void: the path cleared by the metaphorical machetes of The Savage Detectives. -J. Zaidi

Then We Came to the End
by Joshua Ferris (Little, Brown)

A Chicago advertising agency faces its last days in this frightfully funny debut novel. Ferris chronicles a group hoping to keep their jobs: the stories they cling to and the rumors they spread, the very real joy of free bagels, the small cruelties they visit upon one another, and the hard-earned moments when they recognize one another as actual human beings rather than as the collections of crap personalizing their offices.

To borrow some ad-speak that desperate-for-approval Jim Jackers might employ: You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you won't read anything else like it. This is a marvel of a book. -E. Staudt

A Far Country
by Daniel Mason (Knopf)

Enter the image-filled world of this novel—a mysterious place of beautiful plantations often plagued by drought, a chaotic city swarming with rural migrants—and find yourself in a far, but strangely familiar, country.

Fourteen-year-old Isabel is extraordinarily close to her brother Isaias. After experiencing hardship in their village, she follows him to the city, where she hopes for a reunion, and for the rumored array of opportunities awaiting. Her story is about hopes and convictions, innocence and acceptance. Told as straightforwardly as a fable, it is cinematic in its imagery and, like a vivid, epic dream, remains timeless and haunting. -E. Dorfman

Coal Black Horse
by Robert Olmstead (Algonquin)

Only fourteen, Robey Childs is sent to fetch his father, a soldier in the Civil War. From the first page it is obvious that this is not just another coming-of-age Civil War tale; it's clear that this is one of the outstanding Civil War novels. Olmstead's writing is magnificent, and this story will grab you and pull you under. Robey travels on his mysterious black horse and sees humanity at its worst. He is shot at and witnesses hunger, rape, slavery, and carnage. The raw beauty of this book makes it a pleasure to read, and its story will haunt you. -T. Taylor

Flight
by Sherman Alexie (Black Cat)

Zits is a fifteen-year-old orphaned Native American who has been in countless abusive foster homes, is known for setting fires, and has been in jail so many times he has a personal relationship with the cop who often catches him. With paint gun in one hand and a .38 pistol in the other, he may or may not be a mass murderer. As the story shifts back and forth in time, he becomes white Indian killers and Native American Indian betrayers; it’s uncertain if Zits even exists.This book is a violent story of an all-too-familiar character on the streets of Seattle. -T. Radebaugh

Heyday
by Kurt Andersen (Random House)

At the heart of Kurt Andersen's epic novel stands Benjamin Knowles, an adventure-hungry young Englishman who's blurry-eyed when thinking of anything "American." Seeking grander things, Ben relocates himself to late 1840s New York, where he falls in with Polly, the actress/prostitute who will steal his heart; her unpredictable brother; and a journalist with a penchant for trouble. However, Ben hasn't come to the New World alone; someone has crossed the sea with him, and his past threatens to exact its revenge. Andersen excels at recreating mid-century New York and delights with historical gems in this absolute diamond of a novel. -C. Joyner

The Raw Shark Texts
by Steven Hall (Canongate)

This is the most inventive story you will read in 2007. It is an experience that will probably forever change the way you look at fiction and storytelling. The cunning and daring of Hall's stylistic gambits may call to mind works by other great innovators of the genre, yet the synapse-searing originality of his vision makes any one direct comparison impossible. Here is an adventure in the mind's eye, a trip to the outer fringes of psychology and consciousness, where delicate reality is folded into an origami creature that seems structurally impossible, yet undeniably magnificent. This is the next step. -J. Zaidi

The God of Animals
by Aryn Kyle (Scribner)

Summer has come to Desert Valley, Colorado, in this vividly written debut novel. Twelve-year-old Alice may as well be one of the mayflies on her family's horse ranch. Her sister, whose blue ribbons line the living-room walls, ran off with a rodeo cowboy. Her mother doesn't get out of bed, let alone notice Alice has outgrown her clothes. Her father spends his days giving riding lessons to an obnoxious rich kid and flirting with the doctor's wife who boards her horse in their barn. So Alice endures the boredom and loneliness by practicing what she does best. She lies. -J. Darrah

Christine Falls
by Benjamin Black (Henry Holt)

Quirke, a Dublin pathologist, stumbles out of an office party and down to the morgue to discover his brother-in-law Malachy, a physician, altering a file. Only later does Quirke put a name to the file: Christine Falls. Quirke suspects that Malachy is trying to conceal the cause of her death for some reason. The clues point toward Dublin's high Catholic society, and several members of Quirke's own family. I love the portrait of 1950s Dublin that Black (aka John Banville) has created. The family secrets are the stuff of Greek tragedy. -G. Berry

Angelica
by Arthur Phillips (Random House)

Having quashed any notion of a "sophomore slump" with his masterful tale The Egyptologist, Phillips again explores entirely new territory. Angelica is the story of a small family in Victorian England that is slowly cracking under barely perceptible seismic shifts at its core. The narrative is broken into four segments, with each family member (and one outsider) taking a turn at recounting the chain of events. Only after digesting the differences and similarities of each account can the reader finally get a clear picture of the true horror that has transpired within the halls of the Barton house. -J. Zaidi

The Camel Bookmobile
by Masha Hamilton (HarperCollins)

Librarian Fiona Sweeny could not be more excited to leave her life in New York to help run a camel bookmobile program in Kenya. The village of Mididima is greatly impacted by the arrival of the frizzy-haired bibliophile and her boxes of books. There are those, like schoolteacher Matani, who believe literacy is imperative to the survival of their people. Others contend that the Westernized books encourage younger tribe members to abandon tradition for the "Distant City." When the local outcast finds an unexpected use for some books, it sets a course of action that creates unpredictable outcomes for many. -J. Darrah

Fieldwork
by Mischa Berlinski (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux)

Mischa Berlinski's erudite debut novel is a quest to understand the suicide of a young female American anthropologist in a Thai prison, where she had been serving a fifty-year sentence for the murder of an American Protestant missionary. Cunningly plotted, Fieldwork finds an obsessed journalist (also Berlinski) unraveling a lurid mystery that deftly incorporates a study on little-known, albeit fictional, indigenous hill tribes in northern Thai-Burmese border areas. Delving into opposing American ideals in a foreign land, this is a refreshingly strong and compulsively readable first effort from an exciting new talent. -J. Reiner

The Post-Birthday World
by Lionel Shriver (HarperCollins)

Each of us has pivotal moments when we make decisions that will either irrevocably alter the course of our lives or leave us with the nagging regrets of a missed opportunity. Irina McGovern must choose whether she will remain faithful to her partner of ten years. The Post-Birthday World explores the twin tales of Irina's life for the five years after this decision, following her down the path of both fidelity and infidelity. The story is a reminder to enjoy the most exquisite moments of our lives and to hedge our bets against the times when everything falls apart. -M. Hickner

The Song of Kahunsha
by Anosh Irani (Milkweed)

We blind ourselves to horror. It's too shocking and too expected all at once; we turn away from news reports, sure of what we'll find. Thank god we have Chamdi, the ten-year-old hero of this gripping, desperately powerful book. In one impulsive move, the child runs away from his relatively sheltered orphanage to the streets of Bombay. He's never heard of hunger, begging, or crime bosses, but he’s about to. Through his eyes, we witness Bombay, and through his eternally hopeful filter, we are kept from being crushed by it, while also realizing the scope of his obstacles. -R. Crawford

The Lizard Cage
by Karen Connelly (Nan A. Talese)

This epic tale surrounds Teza, a songwriter whose protest songs against the Burmese dictatorship polarize a people. Jailed for his dissident beliefs, Teza is cut off from the outside world and forbidden from receiving visitors, save for the lizards that creep through his cell.

Amid the torture and corruption, Teza befriends Nyi Lay, a young boy who has grown up inside the jail, and together they form a bond that can’t be broken by the malevolence of tyranny.

All at once, poetic and fast paced, Connelly has crafted a tale of resiliency that one hopes still occurs in real life. -C. Stryer

The Various Haunts of Men
by Susan Hill (Overlook)

A number of people mysteriously disappear without a trace on what locals call "the hill" in Lafferton, a small cathedral town. Policewoman Freya Graffham, who has recently left the metropolitan police for the country, is assigned the case. What appears to start as a missing-persons case begins to take on more urgency with each disappearance. Susan Hill has written an acute, psychological story of a serial murderer, telling the story alternately from the perspective of the killer, the victims, and the police. This is top-of-the-line crime fiction. -G. Berry

Gutenberg to Google

by Jamie Reiner

Johannes Gutenberg could have saved himself some trouble. If he knew that Google would someday simply transform his bible into the computerized code of ones and zeros for the purposes of their ambitious Book search, he might well have not crafted any letter blocks at all for his movable-type press. Fortunately, Guttenberg was interested in the mass production of the printed word, which, as history has shown, facilitated the broad distribution of not only religious material but that of popular and, perhaps most importantly, scientific material. Only then did commercial realities assume control of the process, with the industry evolving into what we now call the publishing world.

This simplified rendering could not be more different from the complex game that is publishing today. Publishing now is a minutely tended equation where commercial and artistic variables are balanced in the search for the elusive successful book. Detailed profit-and-loss statements catalog projected costs, sales, royalties, marketing, and distribution. All the while, editing style, cover art, typeface, paper, and binding choices are painstakingly determined. To be sure, the right moment and some measure of luck are needed, but the time-honored craft still practiced by some houses has been elevated to a physical art form. Is that model now in peril?

That publishing has undergone myriad transformations in its long history is not under dispute; rather, it is whether the current spate of technological transformation—that of broader digitalization and specifically new tools such as Google Book Search— will soon mete out the same fate to which other industries have become victim. In other words—a life lived in cyberspace. My prediction, and passionate hope, is no.

We need only look at the limitless, and to date all but completely unrealized, possibilities the eBook promised. What the eBook and the like still portend remains to be seen, but for just now the feel and smell and permanence of a freshly printed book is where our loyalties and purses continue to be directed. For a book is the record of human existence, and as such, a vehicle for social, physical interaction, and object to which many of us are inexorably drawn.

As our logo implies, this bookstore serves as the vessel of exploration for you, the readers, the authors, the community. And we here at Elliott Bay look forward to being a part of this collective voyage as long as there are literary seas to be sailed.

Children's & Young Adult Books

Twisted
by Laurie Halse Anderson (Viking)

From Laurie Halse Anderson, the acclaimed author of Speak (Penguin), we are given another literary treaure brimming with teen angst that flips the stereotypical young-adult novel on its head. Our antihero, Tyler Miller has always drifted leagues under the social radar, but after a summer digging holes and laying tar to pay his dues for a vandalism arrest, Tyler starts senior year with a new muscular physique and bad-boy reputation that catches the eye of his fantasy girlfriend, Bethany. Things seem to finally be looking up for Tyler, little does he know his troubles have just begun. -J. Darrah

I Hate Books!
by Kate Walker
illus. by David Cox (Cricket)

Hamish is a born writer with a powerful imagination, but he's no reader—at least, not yet. Somehow, he's made it to his fourth year of school without learning to read. When his teachers finally realize their mistake, he's in for a grueling time (though lively prose and illustrations reminiscent of Quentin Blake's keep this book from feeling grueling to us). Timeless and heartfelt, this book feels like a classic and reminds us how difficult—and how rewarding—reading can be. -R. Crawford

The Golden Rule
by Ilene Cooper
illus. by Gabi Swiatkowska (Abrams)

Everyone knows a version of the"Golden Rule"—but what do the words really mean and how do you follow them? In this luminous picture book a grandfather and his grandson see the words "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" on a sign and begin to discuss what the words can mean and how to apply them in life. Grandfather shows that the words are for rich and poor, young or old. He explains that however simple this idea may be, it is valuable—golden—and by embodying it your life will also shine. -H. Myers

Chicabee
by Andrew M. Lueck (Lueck Studios)

Chicabee is the Eloise of the new century. Whether walking in the rain, brushing up on her Spanish, or simply enjoying a double short no-foam marshmallow hot chocolate, Chicabee is the cosmopolitan kid. Chicabee spend quality time with her dog Yappy walking the lake and eating sundaes, and her cat Sparkle likes to play at bath time. Chicabee tries to spend quality time with her sister, Little-O, but sometimes sisters disagree. Yummy and unfussy text make the story highly readable, and vivid illustrations in sherbert tones make this Seattle-centric picture book an absolute treasure for young and old alike. -H. Myers