Every holiday season we look back at all the extraordinary books we've read this past year as well as some of the marvelous new releases adorning our shelves. We try to feature titles here that we think will make wonderful gifts and it is always challenging to pick just a few to fill a diverse range of needs and desires. We are delighted to share this selection with you and also invite you to come visit and peruse our shelves and ask us for additional recommendations. We have complimentary giftwrap and ship worldwide. And if you can't decide which book is just right, gift certificates are available. We look forward to serving you and yours over the holidays and throughout the new year.

War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkhonsky (Knopf)

You've either a) never read War and Peace; or b) not read this translation, in which case you've never read War and Peace. Pevear and Volkhonsky have done it again—transported a Russian masterpiece into English that is brimming with life and vigor.

This is one of those rare and wonderful books I couldn't wait to get home and dive into each night—and for me, it ended way too soon. The revelation: Princess Márya emerges as the most perfectly realized, sympathetic character among the panoply of strutting, incomplete men. -P. Aaron

The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
by David Halberstam (Hyperion)

It has been called many things: the nasty war, the sour war, the forgotten war, the Korean War. Halberstam's magisterial history of this three-year conflict proves that it was all these things and more. In striking detail he sorts through all the key battles, political debates, and personalities and concludes that this was a cruel and difficult war that made no one happy. This book is a must-read and a great gift for everyone with a historical interest. -C. Kirchner

Knife Skills Illustrated: A User's Manual
by Peter Hertzmann (Norton)

Sur La Table instructor Hertzmann has created a brilliant reference for home cooks who want to sharpen their knife skills. From the basics of knife anatomy and proper hand technique to fully illustrated cuts for fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, and poultry, this terrific book truly educates. With both right- and left-handed example illustrations, cooks will learn how to choose and hold a knife, apply the skills for a delicate chiffonade, and properly carve a holiday turkey. -H. Myers

My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals
by Melanie Dunea (Bloombury)

"What would be your last meal on earth?" Melanie Dunea asks fifty of the world's most lauded chefs to share the details of their ideal last meals: where they'd dine; who would join them; what music would be playing; and of course, in mouth-watering detail, what they would eat.

The result is a captivating assemblage of tantalizing recipes, sumptuous portraits (some chefs bare more than their souls!), and rich, fulfilling insights into what it means to celebrate life's sensuous pleasures. -E. Staudt

The Best American Comics 2007
edited by Chris Ware (Houghton Mifflin)

Comics, graphica, sequential art: Whichever term you prefer, this collection offers a glimpse of the brilliant expression achieved by the marriage of words and pictures, or novels and art. This refreshing addition to the Best American series is edited by the inimitable artist Chris Ware, who leaves little of the book’s surface untouched by the beautiful, bizarre, and oftentimes hilarious comics published throughout the year, thus giving us a celebratory anthology for art of our time. -M. Woolbright

Everywhere Being is Dancing: Twenty Pieces of Thinking
by Robert Bringhurst (Gaspereau)

In this strikingly beautiful new book of essays and poetic translations, Robert Bringhurst, renowned linguist, poet, and typographer, makes vital, readable connections between poetry and the world, between language and the ways we are in the world. Included in dual-language texts are passages and translations from Tlingit, Greek, Cree, Russian, Haida, Chinese, and German. Readers of Bringhurst's earlier gem, The Solid Form of Language, will find more treasures for the eye, mind, and heart in this rich, knowing book. -R. Simonson

The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution
by Alice Waters (Clarkson Potter)

Alice Waters wants to change the world—one meal at a time. The essence of this handsome book is that food prepared at the height of freshness and season is the most exquisite. The book is divided into two sections: The first teaches foundations and fundamentals for basics—soups, salads, pasta, and bread, etc. The second is a collection of further recipes to build on. Tasteful line drawings accompany the well-laid-out text. A beautiful addition to any cook's library. -H. Myers

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
by Jeffrey Toobin (Doubleday)

Jeffrey Toobin's newest puts this country's judicial milestones of the last generation in a context of the individual personalities and histories of the Supreme Court justices. The Nine is a fascinating window into how these secretive, and near-mythic, lawmakers navigate the complexities of an evolving nation to rule with a varying mixture of personal ideology and concern for public opinion. The result is a surprisingly gripping narrative to be read and debated by every American with an interest in the health of our democracy. -J. Reiner

Pacific Northwest Wining & Dining: The People, Places, Food, and Drink of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia
by Braiden Rex-Johnson (Wiley)

Discover the Northwest palate in this grand collection of recipes from chefs and winemakers of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia. All the recipes in the book are paired with a Northwest wine varietal, so for example you will know that the venerable Seattle Canlis classic prawns are best served with an off-dry Riesling or that the Dungeness crab and pine nut lasagna from Nick's Italian Café in McMinnville, Oregon, should be accompanied by a pinot noir or pinot gris. A delicious collection! -H. Myers

The Principles of Uncertainty
by Maira Kalman (Penguin)

Maira Kalman, artist, author, designer, and illustrator of last year's The Elements of Style Illustrated, returns with a journal of a year in her life, a year lavish with questions, discoveries, and unexpected delights. Dazzling illustrations accompany a handwritten narrative that traverses the heartbreaking, quirky, hilarious, and life-affirming. Whether on the New York subway, wandering Paris, or contemplating her empty-box collection, Kalman sees into the secret heart of things, and the world somehow seems more tender and beautiful after. -L. Paus

The End of the Alphabet
by CS Richardson (Doubleday)

Ambrose Zephyr at fiftysomething learns he has only a month, give or take. His doctor's advice: get his affairs in order. Ambrose’s wish is to see it all, from Amsterdam to Zanzibar, in the company of his adored wife, Zipper. It is not travel that will ease Ambrose or Zipper, but their divine celebration of true love. This elegant novella is truly the perfect gift for a beloved and calls out for a wintry afternoon to be read (possibly aloud). -H. Myers

30,000 Years of Art: The Story of Human Creativity across Time and Space
by the Phaidon Editors (Phaidon)

From 28,000 BC to now, Phaidon presents art from all over the world in chronological order. By juxtaposing artworks from different cultures throughout time, the book is able to show us when artistic breakthroughs occurred and how other cultures followed suit, or how many parts of the world were creating similar works of art at the same time without knowing the other cultures existed. This is a must-have reference for anyone with a love of history. -T. Taylor

Transit Maps of the World
by Mark Ovenden (Penguin)

Transit Maps of the World gives a fascinating perspective on the history and culture of the world's cities. Maps depict meandering in Mexico City or sleek efficiency in Hong Kong. The architecture of subway stops and the logos, names, and colors selected for transit lines all form the design and experience of these intricate systems, and of this book. Large color spreads of the maps are complemented here with historical stories of the thwarting and advancing of mass transit worldwide. -T. Radebaugh

Bridge of Sighs
by Richard Russo (Knopf)

Historically, crossing Venice's "Bridge of Sighs" was a walk to one's death, while today, to pass beneath the bridge in a gondola seals the bond of eternal love. How can the same place be the source of such variant outcomes? In this lush yet uncomplicated story, Richard Russo shows that although we all walk similar paths, our destinations are often worlds apart. Reading this novel is like surveying a vista of gorgeous autumn foliage—simple and natural yet undeniably breathtaking. -J. Zaidi

Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance
by John Berger (Pantheon)

John Berger's life in the arts informs this profound analysis of the many political circumstances causing despair today. In letters to poets and the dead, in the songs of Nick Cave and the photography of Ahlam Shibli, in the title poem by Gareth Evans, in the unaccommodating quality of the forest, and in the movable concept of home, Berger teaches us how to hope. Simply reading is an invigorating step to begin a living response to the current world order. -T. Radebaugh

The Indian Clerk
by David Leavitt (Bloomsbury)

Mysterious envelopes from the subcontinent, secret societies, forbidden desires, and spectral visitations seem unlikely elements to find in a novel dramatizing the lives of two of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. Fortunately no one bothered to tell this to David Leavitt. This impeccably researched and playfully written narrative features an abundance of real historical figures, and focuses not on the achievements that made them famous, but on the everyday trials of existence that made them human. -J. Zaidi

Foreigners
by Caryl Phillips (Knopf)

A writer whose work will surely someday be more widely recognized, Caryl Phillips in his many novels and nonfiction works writes with one of the most distinctive narrative voices today—a quiet, modulated voice that totally arrests one's attention with its fine diction and utter sense of witness. Foreigners is not all fiction, but is all a remarkable meditation on identity, history, fate—three separate stories, yes, involving "foreigners" and what they did not find, laid in layers upon the other, as history would have them. -R. Simonson

Fire in the Blood
by Irène Némirovsky (Knopf)

The tragic drama of Némirovsky's life—soaring popularity in prewar France, capture in the net of French collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, her ultimate death in Auschwitz—threatens to overshadow the quality of the writing that has "reemerged." But nothing can disguise the brilliance of her final novel, Fire in the Blood. This slim volume is a perfect jewel, in which the surface quiet of an insular French rural village is peeled back to unmask all the violence of human emotions, and in which even youthful passions enacted far in the past resurface downstream in the most inexorable—and unexpected—ways. -P. Aaron

Foreskin's Lament
by Shalom Auslander (Riverhead)

Until now, we have had only glimpses of Shalom Auslander's satirical genius. With the release of Foreskin's Lament, the author brings to bear his full wit in a series of hilarious autobiographical episodes fraught with the constraints of Orthodox Judaism. This memoir is by turns angry and confused, but suffused with such humor, sophomoric smut, and downright brilliant prose that it leaves the reader rolling in laughter, begging for more. Suggested pairing: lightly chilled Manischewitz. -J. Reiner

Away
by Amy Bloom (Random House)

After Lillian Leyb's entire family is slaughtered in a Russian pogrom, she makes her way to America in 1924. Her dream of a new beginning takes an unexpected turn, however, when she discovers that the young daughter she thought murdered may still be alive. Lillian's determination to find Sophie takes her on a daunting journey from New York's Lower East Side to Seattle's jazz district to the Alaskan wilderness.

Away is that rarest of literary pleasures: a gorgeously written page-turner. -L. Paus

New Selected Poems
by Mark Strand (Knopf)

That, in over four decades of publishing books of poems, the flame of Mark Strand's brilliance has been refined and concentrated to a point of pure precision is evident in this new volume of selections from his ten previous collections. Reading from beginning to end is to witness the light of intelligence sinking in, and suffusing the heart. Strand might well take his place alongside Stanley Kunitz as the finest of American poets of the past fifty years. -P. Aaron

The Theory of Clouds
by Stéphane Audeguy (Harcourt)

Librarian Virginie Latour is hired by Hiroshima survivor and eccentric couturier Akira Kumo to catalog his extensive and highly specialized library of cloud and early meteorological material. Akira thrills in sharing with Virginie stories of other cloud-obsessed men in history. As the two grow closer, he realizes that it’s his own overcast childhood in Hiroshima that he needs to share.

In this debut novel, Audeguy weaves a beautiful tale, effortlessly transitioning from past to present, developing several complex characters, seldom wasting a word. -P. Egan

Run
by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins)

In her brilliant new novel, Patchett explores how lives can be irrevocably changed in one pivotal moment. As Bernard Doyle and his two grown sons, Tip and Teddy, make their way from the lecture they have just attended, their first words of an argument are spoken, but before it can reach its fury an accident involving a stranger and her daughter halts everything. This is the story of how one group of people, family and strangers, comes together. -H. Myers

Schulz and Peanuts
by David Michaelis (Harper)

Charles Schulz's Peanuts is probably the closest thing to The Brothers Karamazov that the U.S. will ever produce. His ability to capture the neuroses and fears and hopes of an entire nation in a simple, irregular line is unprecedented.

With a watchmaker's grace, Michaelis explores the melancholy soul behind Charlie Brown. This comprehensive biography explores Schulz's tiny tragedies and sublime triumphs, and explains how they ultimately led to the creation of the greatest comic strip ever. Good grief, indeed. -P. Constant

The Uncommon Reader
by Alan Bennett (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux)

When the Queen's corgis stray into the bookmobile at Buckingham Palace, a whole new world opens to Her Majesty: the world of books. The reading of books becomes a subversive act for the Queen—she loses interest in her ceremonial duties, preferring to keep company with the characters in the books. Bennett has charm, wit, and style in telling this most "uncommon" of stories. It is a love letter to the act of reading, and you will be warmed in the story's afterglow. -G. Berry

The Freedom Manifesto: How to Free Yourself from Anxiety, Fear, Mortgages, Money, Guilt, Debt, Government, Boredom, Supermarkets, Bills, Melancholy, Pain, Depression, Work, and Waste
by Tom Hodgkinson (HarperPerennial)

If Tom Paine hadn’t already used the title to great effect, I would have called this book Common Sense. Hodgkinson, founder of the journal The Idler and provocateur extraordinaire, has written a wonderfully subversive, engaging, and witty manifesto on how to enjoy life. For far too long Brits and (North) Americans have taken communion from the great Puritan "honey" bucket—and you were wondering why we are so joyless! This will be the last "self-help" book you will ever need. -G. Berry

The Bible: A Biography
by Karen Armstrong (Atlantic Monthly Press)

Readers from Christian and Jewish backgrounds and others interested in the historical roots of the Bible and in the changing ways in which the Bible has been read over time will enjoy this fast-paced, informative, and surprising volume. Armstrong, one of the West's most popular scholars of religion, touches on many twists and turns of history, revealing forgotten perspectives, now-obscure religious movements, and hidden truths about one of the world's most read yet least understood texts. -K.M. Allman

The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Pacific Northwest
by Lawrence Kreisman and Glenn Mason (Timber)

Pacific Northwest architects, designers, and artists working in the Arts and Crafts style in the early 20th century are celebrated in this groundbreaking and beautifully illustrated book. While Seattle's bungalow boom, Northwest artisan furniture and fixture makers, painters, and others were influenced by artistic movements in England, Japan, and elsewhere in North America, the uniqueness and enduring beauty of these Northwest-produced buildings and items are well demonstrated here. Anyone with an appreciation of regional history or design will find much to appreciate. -K.M. Allman

The Poet's Corner: The One-and-Only Poetry Book for the While Family
compiled by John Lithgow (Grand Central Publishing)

John Lithgow has put together a collection of some of the finest English-language poetry; the result is a perfect introduction for readers looking for an entry into the world of poetry. Lithgow has included short biographies of each poet, as well as brief personal commentaries on the poems. The best feature, aside from the poems themselves, is the bonus CD, which has an array of outstanding actors reading the poems. This collection should provide hours of enjoyment. -G. Berry

Kids

The Incredible Book Eating Boy
by Oliver Jeffers (Philomel)

Henry loved books of every size color and subject, although he liked the red ones best. However, Henry didn’t like books the way you or I might; he literally liked to gobble them up. The more books he ate, the smarter he became, until one day his body could no longer handle the information and he became very sick. In this entertaining picture book, children will find humor, spectacular drawings, and a great lesson about the power and joy of books. -T. Taylor

Book of a Thousand Days
by Shannon Hale (Bloomsbury)

When Lady Saren refuses to marry the despicable Lord Khasar, her father has her shut away in a tower for seven years. As Saren's loyal friend and maid, the resilient Dashti joins her in imprisonment. Through frigid winters, boiling summers, and a constant shortage of food, the girls' friendship keeps despair and hopelessness from taking over.

Newbery Honor–winning author Shannon Hale has taken the classic Grimm fairytale of Maid Maleen and created what may be her finest work yet. -D. Cronin

The Arrival
by Shaun Tan (Arthur A. Levine)

This wordless picture book nearly defies description as artist Shaun Tan takes readers—children and grown-up—on a tremendous journey. The story begins as a man leaves his family and travels to a distant land where everything is different. Here he must find his own way through the strangeness. The duo-tone drawings, done in comic-strip panels, have great detail and subtlety, while the surreal nature of the art states perfectly the newness and unfamiliarity of arriving in a new place. -H. Myers

The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z!
by Steve Martin
illustrated by Roz Chast (Flying Dolphin Press)

Comedian Steve Martin and New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast team up for an alliterative romp through the alphabet. Who else but these two zany minds could come up with Horace the Hare, whose enormous hairdo harbors hunchbacks, or Marvin the Maniac munching macaroons, or Amiable Amy, Alice, and Angie, who ate all the albacore sandwiches handy? Every page is chockablock with whimsical and wacky illustrated word finds that will entertain children and adults alike. A lively, lyrical letter lovefest! -L. Paus

Pippi Longstocking
by Astrid Lindgren
illustrated by Lauren Child (Viking)

The high-spirited redhead who is strong enough to lift a horse and who lives free of rules in Villa Villekulla has a refreshing new look for a new generation of young readers to love.

In celebration of the centenary of Astrid Lindgren’s birth, Pippi Longstocking has been given an engaging new translation and completely fresh-looking collage-style illustrations by Lauren Child. Child’s use of bold colors, cutouts, and fabrics is a perfect complement to this classic, beloved story. -D. Cronin

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie
illustrated by Ellen Forney (Little Brown)

Alexie delivers a hilarious, and valuable, story for young adults. Junior, a Wellpinit-born youth with too much water in his brain, a stutter, a determination to draw cartoons, and a great jump shot, is in search of hope in the face of a destiny of alcoholism and poverty on the reservation. With his cartoons, his "tiny little lifeboats" (provided by Seattle artist Ellen Forney), Junior creates his identity, challenging both the norms of his tribe and the rules of the society beyond. -T. Radebaugh