Recommendations From Other Indie Booksellers

How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award winner Charles Yu delivers his debut novel, a razor-sharp, ridiculously funny, and utterly touching story of a son searching for his father . . . through quantum space–time.

Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he’s not taking client calls or consoling his boss, Phil, who could really use an upgrade, Yu visits his mother (stuck in a one-hour cycle of time, she makes dinner over and over and over) and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory. He learns that the key may be found in a book he got from his future self. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and he’s the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could help him—in fact it may even save his life.

Bridget Allison from Phoenix Books in Esses, Vermont says:
"Charles Yu offers a story of a man traveling through time to find his father. It's an unlikely and surprisingly successful combination of intelligence, wit, and raw emotion. Yu writes with
great skill, immediately charming his readers."

In The Belly of Jonah
In the Belly of Jonah is a fast-paced mystery with a likable protagonist and an intricately woven narrative brimming with bizarre yet believable twists. The first in a series, the book expertly lays the groundwork for Liv Bergen, amateur sleuth, and her love interest, FBI Agent Streeter Pierce.

Liv becomes involved in the investigation of the murder of Jill Brannigan, a summer intern at the limestone mine Liv manages near Fort Collins, Colorado (a breathtaking setting that unwittingly becomes an accessory to crime). In doing so, she inadvertently puts her friends, her family, and herself at risk of being swallowed in the belly of a madman bloated with perverse appetites for women, surrealistic art, and renown.

Perhaps a bit too daring (and at times irreverent) for her own good, ''Boots,'' as Liv's eight siblings call her, soon realizes she has a knack for outsmarting and tracking down the Venus de Milo murderer--and she enjoys it! As the gripping plot of In the Belly of Jonah unfolds, Liv Bergen takes her place alongside the best female crime-solvers as a woman with smarts, self-confidence, and intuitive savvy.

Maria Upichard of Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin says:
"Set among the imposing Colorado Rockies, this first novel in a frightening new series is a fast-paced, gripping mystery to be read with the lights on and the doors locked. You will cheer on this intelligent, gritty heroine as she endeavors to out-think a killer determined to make her his next masterpiece."

Twain's Feast
In the winter of 1879, Mark Twain paused during a tour of Europe to compose a fantasy menu of the American dishes he missed the most. He was desperately sick of European hotel cooking, and his menu, made up of some eighty regional specialties, was a true love letter to American food: Lake Trout, from Tahoe. Hot biscuits, Southern style. Canvasback-duck, from Baltimore. Black-bass, from the Mississippi.

When food writer Andrew Beahrs first read Twain's menu in the classic work A Tramp Abroad, he noticed the dishes were regional in the truest sense of the word-drawn fresh from grasslands, woods, and waters in a time before railroads had dissolved the culinary lines between Hannibal, Missouri, and San Francisco. These dishes were all local, all wild, and all, Beahrs feared, had been lost in the shift to industrialized food.

In Twain's Feast, Beahrs sets out to discover whether eight of these forgotten regional specialties can still be found on American tables, tracing Twain's footsteps as he goes. Twain's menu, it turns out, was also a memoir and a map. The dishes he yearned for were all connected to cherished moments in his life-from the New Orleans croakers he loved as a young man on the Mississippi to the maple syrup he savored in Connecticut, with his family, during his final, lonely years.

Tracking Twain's foods leads Beahrs from the dwindling prairie of rural Illinois to a six-hundred-pound coon supper in Arkansas to the biggest native oyster reef in San Francisco Bay. He finds pockets of the country where Twain's favorite foods still exist or where intrepid farmers, fishermen, and conservationists are trying to bring them back. He reminds us what we've lost as these wild foods have disappeared from our tables, and what we stand to gain from their return.

Weaving together passages from Twain's famous works and Beahrs's own adventures, Twain's Feast takes us on a journey into America's past, to a time when foods taken fresh from grasslands, woods, and waters were at the heart of American cooking.

Jerry Fieldsted from Windows on the World Books and Art in Mariposa, CA says:
"Unhappy with the food in Europe, in A Tramp Abroad Mark Twain famously described several American dishes he would immediately relish once he returned home. Beahrs revisits some of Twain's culinary desires with a fantastic book that digs deep into how much the American food industry has changed. His anthropological approach to the topic is riveting, and any fan of Twain and/or food will devour this tour de force."

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat
Combining the intellect of Malcolm Gladwell with the irreverent humor of Mary Roach and the paradigm-shifting analysis of Jared Diamond, a leading social scientist offers an unprecedented look inside our complex and often paradoxical relationships with animals.

Does living with a pet really make people happier and healthier? What can we learn from biomedical research with mice? Who enjoyed a better quality of life—the chicken on a dinner plate or the rooster who died in a Saturday-night cockfight? Why is it wrong to eat the family dog? Drawing on more than two decades of research in the emerging field of anthrozoology, the science of human–animal relations, Hal Herzog offers surprising answers to these and other questions related to the moral conundrums we face day in and day out regarding the creatures with whom we share our world.

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat is a highly entertaining and illuminating journey through the full spectrum of human–animal relations, based on Dr. Herzog’s groundbreaking research on animal rights activists, cockfighters, professional dog-show handlers, veterinary students, and biomedical researchers. Blending anthropology, behavioral economics, evolutionary psychology, and philosophy, Herzog carefully crafts a seamless narrative enriched with real-life anecdotes, scientific research, and his own sense of moral ambivalence.

Alternately poignant, challenging, and laugh-out-loud funny, this enlightening and provocative book will forever change the way we look at our relationships with other creatures and, ultimately, how we see ourselves.

Chris Wilcox of City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, North Carolina says:
“With this book Hal Herzog delivers provocative popular science at its witty, 'gee-whiz' best. With headings such as 'Feeding Kittens to Boa Constrictors,' this book challenges the reader to think through the knotty ethics of human interactions with other animal species. While it might make you squirm, you'll have fun reading this informal, often-humorous survey of the emerging, interdisciplinary field of anthrozoology. Like Malcolm Gladwell, Herzog blends scientific abstracts with anecdotes to form a compelling narrative.”


This Must Be The Place
The Darby-Jones boardinghouse in Ruby Falls, New York, is home to Mona Jones and her daughter, Oneida, two loners and self-declared outcasts who have formed a perfectly insular family unit: the two of them and the three eclectic boarders living in their house. But their small, quiet life is upended when Arthur Rook shows up in the middle of a nervous breakdown, devastated by the death of his wife, carrying a pink shoe box containing all his wife's mementos and keepsakes, and holding a postcard from sixteen years ago, addressed to Mona but never sent. Slowly the contents of the box begin to fit together to tell a story—one of a powerful friendship, a lost love, and a secret that, if revealed, could change everything that Mona, Oneida, and Arthur know to be true. Or maybe the stories the box tells and the truths it brings to life will teach everyone about love—how deeply it runs, how strong it makes us, and how even when all seems lost, how tightly it brings us together. With emotional accuracy and great energy, This Must Be the Place introduces memorable, charming characters that refuse to be forgotten.

Avery Dickey of Inkwood Books in Tampa, Florida says:
"A quirky cast of characters comes together to make up a highly entertaining, engaging, and touching book. Chief among them are Oneida Jones, a self-described freak who has embraced her oddness; her mother, Mona, a wedding cake baker and the proprietress of the Darby-Jones boardinghouse; and Arthur Rook, a recently widowed photographer who believes he can 'see' the real essence of a person. You will come to love these characters and this book!"

The Koala of Death
When zoo keeper Theodora “Teddy” Bentley fishes the body of Koala Kate out of Gunn Landing Harbor, she discovers that her fellow zoo keeper didn’t drown; she was strangled. The clues to Koala Kate’s killer implicate other animal keepers at the Gunn Zoo, including Outback Bill, marsupial keeper and Kate’s Aussie ex-boyfriend; and Robin Chase, the big cat keeper who’s got it in for Teddy. Also displaying suspicious behavior are several “liveaboarders” at the harbor; Speaks-To-Souls, a shady “animal psychic”; and even Caro, Teddy’s much-married, ex-beauty queen mother. But murderers aren’t all Teddy has to worry about. Her embezzling father is still on the run from the Feds, and the motor on the Merilee, her beloved houseboat is failing. To pay for the repairs, Teddy agrees to appear on a weekly live television broadcast featuring misbehaving animals that range from Wanchu, a cuddly koala, to Abim, a panicky wallaby – and all hell breaks loose in the TV studio. To add to Teddy’s woes, the killer zeroes in on her with near-fatal results. The Koala of Death brings a return to Gunn Zoo and the social-climbing humans and eccentric animals that made the prize-winning The Anteater of Death so popular. Readers will enjoy this behind-the-scenes peek at zoo life, and learn that poor little rich girls like Teddy lead much more complicated lives that they’d ever imagine – especially when they’re tracking killers.

Linda Dewberry of Whodunit? Books in Olympia, Washington, says:
"Zookeeper Teddy Bentley is back in this delightful second book in the Gunn Zoo mystery series. This time, in addition to solving the murder of her fellow zookeeper, Teddy finds that she has hidden talents as a TV personality. The characters are wonderful, and the setting reminds you of your childhood. Can't wait to read more of these!"