Introducing Our New VIB:

Philipp Meyer, the acclaimed author of American Rust, returns with The Son: an epic of the American West and a multigenerational saga of power, blood, land, and oil that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family, from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the to the oil booms of the 20th century.

Harrowing, panoramic, and deeply evocative, The Son is a fully realized masterwork in the greatest tradition of the American canon—an unforgettable novel that combines the narrative prowess of Larry McMurtry with the knife-edge sharpness of Cormac McCarthy.

Part epic of Texas, part classic coming- of-age story, part unflinching portrait of the bloody price of power, The Son is an utterly transporting novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American West through the lives of the McCulloughs, an ambitious family as resilient and dangerous as the land they claim

Spring, 1849. The first male child born in the newly established Republic of Texas, Eli McCullough is thirteen years old when a marauding band of Comanches storms his homestead and brutally murders his mother and sister, taking him captive. Brave and clever, Eli quickly adapts to life among the Comanches, learning their ways and language, answering to a new name, becoming the chief's adopted son, and waging war against their enemies, including white men—which complicates his sense of loyalty and understanding of who he is. But when disease, starvation, and overwhelming numbers of armed Americans decimate the tribe, Eli finds himself alone. Neither white nor Indian, civilized nor fully wild, he must carve a place for himself in a world in which he does not fully belong—a journey of adventure, tragedy, hardship, grit, and luck that reverberates in the lives of his progeny.

Intertwined with Eli's story are those of his son, Peter, a man who bears the emotional cost of his father's drive for power, and Jeannie, Eli's great-granddaughter, a woman who must fight hardened rivals to succeed in a man's world.

Philipp Meyer deftly explores how Eli's ruthlessness and steely pragmatism transform subsequent generations of McCulloughs. Love, honor, even children are sacrificed in the name of ambition as the family becomes one of the richest powers in Texas, a ranching-and-oil dynasty of unsurpassed wealth and privilege. Yet, like all empires, the McCulloughs must eventually face the consequences of their choices. Harrowing, panoramic, and vividly drawn, The Son is a masterful achievement from a sublime young talent.

Save the Date!!!

Tuesday, June 11, 2013, at 7:30 at our Colfax Avenue store, Phillipp Meyer will be reading from and discussing his latest book (as well as signing it, of course).  Don't miss out on this chance to meet the author!

Every now and then we encounter a new book that we’re so excited about we want to shout it from the rooftops, so we've created a special tag to distinguish it from the rest: TC VIB (very impressive book)! That means it’s a true stand-out in a season of many excellent and compelling new books.

New and Noteable On Our Shelves

When your Internet cable leaves your living room, where does it go? Almost everything about our day-to-day lives—and the broader scheme of human culture—can be found on the Internet. But what is it physically? And where is it really? Our mental map of the network is as blank as the map of the ocean that Columbus carried on his first Atlantic voyage. The Internet, its material nuts and bolts, is an unexplored territory. Until now.

In Tubes, journalist Andrew Blum goes inside the Internet's physical infrastructure and flips on the lights, revealing an utterly fresh look at the online world we think we know. It is a shockingly tactile realm of unmarked compounds, populated by a special caste of engineer who pieces together our networks by hand; where glass fibers pulse with light and creaky telegraph buildings, tortuously rewired, become communication hubs once again. From the room in Los Angeles where the Internet first flickered to life to the caverns beneath Manhattan where new fiber-optic cable is buried; from the coast of Portugal, where a ten-thousand-mile undersea cable just two thumbs wide connects Europe and Africa, to the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, where Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have built monumental data centers—Blum chronicles the dramatic story of the Internet's development, explains how it all works, and takes the first-ever in-depth look inside its hidden monuments.

This is a book about real places on the map: their sounds and smells, their storied pasts, their physical details, and the people who live there. For all the talk of the "placelessness" of our digital age, the Internet is as fixed in real, physical spaces as the railroad or telephone. You can map it and touch it, and you can visit it. Is the Internet in fact "a series of tubes" as Ted Stevens, the late senator from Alaska, once famously described it? How can we know the Internet's possibilities if we don't know its parts?

Like Tracy Kidder's classic The Soul of a New Machine or Tom Vanderbilt's recent bestseller Traffic, Tubes combines on-the-ground reporting and lucid explanation into an engaging, mind-bending narrative to help us understand the physical world that underlies our digital lives.

The critically acclaimed author of Russian Winter turns her "sure and suspenseful artistry" (Boston Globe) to the lives of three colleagues and lovers in the world of classical music.

On a Boston street one warm spring day, Hazel and Remy spot each other for the first time in years. Although their brief meeting may seem insignificant, behind them lie two decades in which their life paths have crisscrossed, diverged, and ultimately interlaced. Remy, a gifted violinist, is married to the composer Nicholas Elko—once the love of Hazel's life.

It has been twenty years since Remy, an ambitious conservatory student; Nicholas, a wunderkind launching an international career; and his wife, the beautiful and fragile Hazel, first came together, tipping their collective world on its axis. As their story unfolds from 1987 to 2007, from Europe to America, from conservatory life to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, each discovers the surprising ways in which the quest to create something real and true—be it a work of art or one's own life—can lead to the most personal of revelations.

Lyrical and evocative, Sight Reading explores the role of art and beauty in everyday life, while unspooling a transporting story of marriage, family, and the secrets we keep, even from ourselves.

Jimmy Connors is a working-man's hero, a people's champion who could tear the cover off a tennis ball, just as he tore the cover off the country-club gentility of his sport. A renegade from the wrong side of the tracks, Connors broke the rules with a radically aggressive style of play and bad-boy antics that turned his matches into prizefights. In 1974 alone, he won 95 out of 99 matches, all of them while wearing the same white shorts he washed in the sink of his hotel bathrooms. Though he lived the rock star life away from tennis, his enduring dedication to his craft earned him eight Grand Slam singles titles and kept him among the top ten best players in the world for sixteen straight years—five at number one.

In The Outsider, Connors tells the complete, uncensored story of his life and career, setting the record straight about his formidable mother, Gloria; his very public romance with America's sweetheart Chris Evert; his famous opponents, including Björn Borg, John McEnroe, Arthur Ashe, Ivan Lendl, and Rod Laver; his irrepressible co-conspirators Ilie Nastase and Vitas Gerulaitis; and his young nemesis Andre Agassi. Connors reveals how his issues with obsessive-compulsive disorder, dyslexia, gambling, and women at various times threatened to derail his career and his long-lasting marriage to Playboy Playmate Patti McGuire.

Presiding over an era that saw tennis attract a new breed of passionate fans—from cops to tycoons—Connors transformed the game forever with his two-handed backhand, his two-fisted lifestyle, and his epic rivalries.

The Outsider is a grand slam of a memoir written by a man once again at the top of his game—as feisty, unvarnished, and defiant as ever.

Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties, delivers another darkly hilarious, heartbreaking coming-of-age novel with The Wonder Bread Summer.

In The Wonder Bread Summer, loosely based on Alice in Wonderland, 20-year-old Allie Dodgson has adventures that rival those Alice had down the rabbit hole. Or those of Weeds’ Nancy Botwin.

Allison is working at a dress shop to help pay for college. The dress shop turns out to be a front for drug dealers. And Allison ends up on the run—with a Wonder Bread bag full of cocaine.

With a hit man after her, Allison wants the help of her parents. But there’s a problem: Her mom took off when Allison was eight; her dad moves so often Allison that doesn’t even have his phone number….

Set in 1980s California, The Wonder Bread Summer is a wickedly funny and fresh caper that’s sure to please fans of Christopher Moore, Carl Hiaasen, and Marcy Dermansky.

A Far Piece to Canaan is a warm and nostalgic novel from an unexpected source: Sam Halpern, whose salty paternal wisdom made Justin Halpern’s Sh*t My Dad Says a phenomenal bestseller.

Inspired by Sam Halpern’s childhood in rural Kentucky, A Far Piece to Canaan tells the story of Samuel Zelinsky, a celebrated but troubled former professor who reluctantly returns after his wife’s death to the Kentucky hills where he lived as a child to reconnect with long-buried memories and make good on a forgotten promise.

In 1945, Sam and his best friend, Fred Mulligan, visit the Blue Hole, a legendary pool on the Kentucky River where the hill people believe an evil force lurks. Along with a couple of neighbor boys, they discover the body of a dog, surrounded by twisted human footprints—and a cave that offers further evidence that something terrible has transpired. Fearing they'll be punished for their trespasses, the boys initiate a series of cover-ups and lies that eventually leads to a community disaster.

When the Zelinskys move, Fred and Samuel promise each other that if either calls, the other will come to his aid. But Samuel's failure to keep his promise has lasting consequences he could never have predicted. Now, decades later, he confronts his failures and attempts to redeem himself, finally achieving peace through his late return to Canaan land.

A tale of superstition, secrets, and heroism in the postwar South, A Far Piece to Canaan: A Novel of Friendship and Redemption is the surprising and moving debut of a gifted storyteller.

The Food Network star is back with an all-new, all-American book in his #1 New York Times bestselling series

In its seventeenth season, Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-ins and Dives continues its reign as America's best source for finding the funky, scratch-made, and delicious. Now the host and #1 New York Times bestselling author returns with more of his favorite joints across the country—and a few in Canada! In this third entry in his Diners, Drive-ins and Dives: The Funky Finds in Flavortown series, Guy keeps his motto front and center—"If it's funky, I'll find it." This time around he's bringing on the big personalities, the rockin' real-deal recipes, and the homegrown restaurants that capture the freewheeling American spirit at its finest.

Also along for the ride are members of Guy's rambunctious Krew, sharing their most memorable shoots, meals, behind-the-scenes stories, and killer pranks from the road. And check out this new feature—a tricked-out, full-color foldout map that shows the location of every diner in the book!

TC Tidbit: What's YOUR Take On Gendered Book Covers?

Read what Maureen Johnson had to say about it HERE.  Don't miss the slide show--it's really good!

Topher Is New To TC And Ready To Share Some Great Reads With You!

With this devastatingly sharp critique of Scientology, Lawrence Wright proves that investigative journalism is still alive and well. Wright’s meticulous and expansive research on the subject (including over 200 interviews) is clearly visible on the page. Going Clear is a fascinating read.

Fantasy legend Neil Gaiman and horror novelist Al Sarrantonio have tapped some of the best writers currently working to make this gem of a collection. The stories successfully showcase the unique voice of each author. Chuck Palahniuk’s “Loser” and Gaiman’s own “The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains” were my personal favorites.

Apart from being a solid and entertaining thriller,  Gone Girl creates a fascinating portrait of the bizarre relationship between a husband and wife. Flynn skillfully guides the reader through numerous plot twists, each building to a genuinely disturbing conclusion. This book pushes the boundaries of the mystery genre.







I picked up The Commitments, started reading, laughed all the way through it, and was in a good mood for the rest of the day. Doyle's gift for likeable and realistic characters is on full display here. This book is charming, hysterical, and sincere.

--Topher

“A fascinating yarn centered around an unlikely heroine. . . . Fox’s deft explanations of the script-solving process allow readers to share in the mental detective work of cracking the lost language.” --Publishers Weekly

In 1900, while excavating on Crete, the charismatic Victorian archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed inscribed clay tablets amid the ruins of a lavish Bronze Age palace. Written by palace scribes circa 1450 b.c., the script they displayed—featuring outline drawings of swords, chariots, and horses' heads, as well as other tiny pictograms—resembled no alphabet ever seen. Evans named the script Linear B, and from the start it posed a deep mystery. No one knew what language Linear B recorded, much less what the curious inscriptions meant. If the tablets could be deciphered, they would open a portal onto a refined, wealthy, and literate society that had flourished in Greek lands three thousand years earlier, a full millennium before the glories of the Classical Age.
 
The Riddle of the Labyrinth is the true story of the quest to solve one of the most mesmerizing riddles in history—Linear B—and of the three brilliant, obsessed, and ultimately doomed investigators whose combined work would eventually crack the code. There was Evans, who had discovered the script but could never unravel it; Alice Kober, the fiery American scholar whose vital work on Linear B never got the recognition it deserved; and Michael Ventris, the haunted English architect who would solve the riddle triumphantly at the age of thirty only to die four years later under circumstances that remain the subject of speculation even now.

For half a century some of the world's foremost scholars tried to coax the tablets to yield their secrets. Then, in 1952, the script was deciphered seemingly in a single stroke—not by a scholar but by Ventris, an impassioned amateur whose obsession with the tablets had begun in childhood. The decipherment brought him worldwide acclaim. But it also cost him his architectural career, his ties to his family, and quite possibly his life. 

That is the narrative of the decipherment as it has been known thus far. But a major actor in the drama has long been missing: Alice Kober, a classicist at Brooklyn College. Though largely forgotten today, she came within a hair's breadth of deciphering Linear B before her own untimely death in 1950. As The Riddle of the Labyrinth reveals, it was Kober who built the foundation on which Ventris's decipherment stood, an achievement that until now has been all but lost to history. Drawing on a newly opened archive of Kober's papers, Margalit Fox restores this unsung heroine to her rightful place at last.

Above all, this book is a detective story in the tradition of Dava Sobel and Simon Winchester. As Fox narrates the lives of Evans, Kober, and Ventris, she takes readers step-by-step through the forensic process involved in cracking a secret code from the past. Following the three investigators as they hunt down, analyze, and interpret a series of linguistic clues hidden within the script itself, The Riddle of the Labyrinth offers the first complete account of one of the most fascinating conundrums of all time. 

Read an excerpt HERE.

TC Tidbit: Eight Signs You're A Book Person

From thoughtcatalog.com

Jackie Has Been Busy Chasing Tornadoes Right Onto Our Shelves!

 

From the acclaimed author of Wicked River comes Storm Kings, a riveting tale of supercell tornadoes and the quirky, pioneering, weather-obsessed scientists whose discoveries created the science of modern meteorology.

While tornadoes have occasionally been spotted elsewhere, only the central plains of North America have the perfect conditions for their creation. For the early settlers the sight of a funnel cloud was an unearthly event. They called it the “Storm King,” and their descriptions bordered on the supernatural: it glowed green or red, it whistled or moaned or sang. In Storm Kings, Lee Sandlin explores America’s fascination with and unique relationship to tornadoes. From Ben Franklin’s early experiments to the “great storm war” of the nineteenth century to heartland life in the early twentieth century, Sandlin re-creates with vivid descriptions some of the most devastating storms in America’s history, including the Tri-state Tornado of 1925 and the Peshtigo “fire tornado,” whose deadly path of destruction was left encased in glass.

Drawing on memoirs, letters, eyewitness testimonies, and archives, Sandlin brings to life the forgotten characters and scientists who changed a nation—including James Espy, America’s first meteorologist, and Colonel John Park Finley, who helped place a network of weather “spotters” across the country. Along the way, Sandlin details the little-known but fascinating history of the National Weather Service, paints a vivid picture of the early Midwest, and shows how successive generations came to understand, and finally coexist with, the spiraling menace that could erase lives and whole towns in an instant.

Jackie says:
"This book is fascinating--it begins with Ben Franklin and goes on through the 1970s with the history of trying to figure out and forecast tornadoes.  I LOVE storms, so this book was a lovely adventure for me.  I was very surprised to learn about the decades long debate about whether tornadoes even existed, plus many, many other interesting things.  There is a bit of science involved in this book, but a layperson like myself can follow along fairly easily.  And the stories of tornadoes and their antics will haunt you and have you watching the sky more often than not.  Truly a superb book.  I absolutely recommend it for those curious about such things or who just love a good history book."

Tom's Loving These Two New History Books

Nathaniel Philbrick, the bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea and Mayflower, brings his prodigious talents to the story of the Boston battle that ignited the American Revolution.

Boston in 1775 is an island city occupied by British troops after a series of incendiary incidents by patriots who range from sober citizens to thuggish vigilantes. After the Boston Tea Party, British and American soldiers and Massachusetts residents  have warily maneuvered around each other until April 19, when violence finally erupts at Lexington and Concord.  In June, however, with the city cut off from supplies by a British blockade and Patriot militia poised in siege, skirmishes give way to outright war in the Battle of Bunker Hill. It would be the bloodiest battle of the Revolution to come, and the point of no return for the rebellious colonists.

Philbrick brings a fresh perspective to every aspect of the story. He finds new characters, and new facets to familiar ones. The real work of choreographing rebellion falls to a thirty-three year old physician named Joseph Warren who emerges as the on-the-ground leader of the Patriot cause and is fated to die at Bunker Hill. Others in the cast include Paul Revere, Warren’s fiancé the poet Mercy Scollay, a newly recruited George Washington, the reluctant British combatant General Thomas Gage and his more bellicose successor William Howe, who leads the three charges at Bunker Hill and presides over the claustrophobic cauldron of a city under siege as both sides play a nervy game of brinkmanship for control.

With passion and insight, Philbrick reconstructs the revolutionary landscape—geographic and ideological—in a mesmerizing narrative of the robust, messy, blisteringly real origins of America.

The American companion to A History of the World in 100 Objects: A fresh, visual perspective on the Civil War

From a soldier’s diary with the pencil still attached to John Brown’s pike, the Emancipation Proclamation, a Confederate Palmetto flag, and the leaves from Abraham Lincoln’s bier, here is a unique and surprisingly intimate look at the Civil War.

Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer sheds new light on the war by examining fifty objects from the New-York Historical Society’s acclaimed collection. A daguerreotype of an elderly, dignified ex-slave, whose unblinking stare still mesmerizes; a soldier’s footlocker still packed with its contents; Grant’s handwritten terms of surrender at Appomattox—the stories these objects tell are rich, poignant, sometimes painful, and always fascinating. They illuminate the conflict from all perspectives—Union and Confederate, military and civilian, black and white, male and female—and give readers a deeply human sense of the war.

With an introduction from Pulitzer Prize winner Eric Foner and more than eighty photographs, The Civil War in 50 Objects is the perfect companion for readers and history fans to commemorate the 150th anniversaries of both the Battle of Gettysburg and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Read an interview with the author HERE.

 

 

TC Tidbit: Five Books With Awful Original Titles

From the folks at bookriot.com

Where's Booker? At A Book Festival!

In April, I was honored to moderate a popular fiction panel at the 4th Annual University of Central Florida Book Festival as a staff member of the Orange County Library System.   Moderators were asked to read the works, were provided  some guidelines on moderating (the most important rule...it's not about you, but the authors who are there to promote their work) and to take advantage of several opportunities to talk with the authors to discuss how the panel would be organized.  One event was an author reception the night before the festival held at the elegant Morgridge International Reading Center on campus.  I went with another colleague from the library, Vanessa Neblett, and we meandered around for a bit as many of the authors appeared to know each other while a number of the others attending were members of the university or student volunteers.  There was a live jazz quartet and finger foods, drinks, and cupcakes.

After some time, everyone headed toward the main hall for a welcome by the organizer, brief commentsby the president of the university, and remarks by the keynote speaker, Lisa Scottoline.  Vanessa and I recognized the authors on my panel, Kimberly Brock and Erika Marks,  and we positioned ourselves where I would be able to introduce myself afterwards.  We also met Wendy Wax and Michael Morris as we all made our way back to the main area where everyone mingled and talked about their trips to Orlando,  their books, and book blogs.

Being in a room full of people who literally could spend hours talking about writing, what they are reading, and blogs about the same is a wonderful experience.  Vanessa and I then found one of the authors on her panel Robert J. Kerstein, professor at the University of Tampa  who wrote Key West on the Edge:  Inventing the Conch Republic.  He, his wife, and Vanessa engaged in a lively discussion about the history of Key West, as Vanessa is a fifth generation Floridian.   Listening to them talk about different locales and the people and places related to them  was a reminder of how often it is fewer than six degrees of separation.

As the evening was drawing to a close, I reconnected with Kimberly and Erika to talk about the various options for their panel.  I was excited to meet them and could hardly wait for the next day.

Erika Marks book, The Mermaid Collector, tells the modern day story of Tom Grace who has been left a lighthouse in Cradle Harbor, Maine and a young wood carver, Tess Patterson.  She struggles with her relationships with both her former boyfriend and her stepfather while still dealing with the loss of her mother when she was younger.  Tom is busy trying to relieve his own guilt by taking care of his wild brother, Dean, whose dreams of being a swimmer were derailed by an accident that also killed their parents.  Meanwhile, the story also relates the history behind the coastal town's annual Mermaid Festival.   It is actually a tragic story that follows the sudden disappearance of several men into the sea and their mystic rescuers from which they are never quite able to recover.  Erika weaves these stories of personal histories, local mythology, and the hope of moving forward in a wonderful and moving way.

Kimberly Brock's book, The River Witch, meanwhile, follows a young ballet dancer, Roslyn,  who has been forced to give up her promising career as a result of a car accident.  She also is dealing with the loss of a baby, a failed relationship with the father of her child, and a complicated relationship with her mother and religion.  She goes to the Little Damascus River and Manny's Island in remote Georgia to try to come to grips with the tumult.  There she meets a community full of tall tales and ancient beliefs as far back as the Native Americans whose members are tight lipped on the one hand and quick to add Roslyn's own story to the town's lore.  She meets a precocious young girl, Damascus, whose mother died and is often left to her own devices by her father.  I had seen Beasts of the Southern Wild only weeks earlier and was immediately reminded of the young girl in that wonderful, yet challenging film.  Similarly, Brock follows both of their stories as they deal with their losses, try to build new relationships while letting go of old ones and continuing to grapple with life's nonstop disappointments. 

The panel was very lively as both Erika and Kimberly shared about the roles of family in their works, the place of myth and stories that we both tell ourselves and the ones that we hide from, and the role of art in healing.   We also talked about the artistic process that they went through to write their pieces and the determination and dedication it takes to see a work through to completion.  Both of them have produced works that are well worth a read.

If you have a chance to attend a book festival, I highly recommend it.  Even more so, if you can be involved at some level,  it was truly a wonderful day and I am so glad I had the opportunity to connect with such inspiring people.

--Edward

Liz and Michele Are Recommending...

In the tradition of Scott Turow, William Landay, and Nelson DeMille, Crime of Privilege is a stunning thriller about power, corruption, and the law in America—and the dangerous ways they come together.

A murder on Cape Cod. A rape in Palm Beach.

All they have in common is the presence of one of America’s most beloved and influential families. But nobody is asking questions. Not the police. Not the prosecutors. And certainly not George Becket, a young lawyer toiling away in the basement of the Cape & Islands district attorney’s office. George has always lived at the edge of power. He wasn’t born to privilege, but he understands how it works and has benefitted from it in ways he doesn’t like to admit. Now, an investigation brings him deep inside the world of the truly wealthy—and shows him what a perilous place it is.

Years have passed since a young woman was found brutally slain at an exclusive Cape Cod golf club, and no one has ever been charged. Cornered by the victim’s father, George can’t explain why certain leads were never explored—leads that point in the direction of a single family—and he agrees to look into it.

What begins as a search through the highly stratified layers of Cape Cod society, soon has George racing from Idaho to Hawaii, Costa Rica to France to New York City. But everywhere he goes he discovers people like himself: people with more secrets than answers, people haunted by a decision years past to trade silence for protection from life’s sharp edges. George finds his friends are not necessarily still friends and a spouse can be unfaithful in more ways than one. And despite threats at every turn, he is driven to reconstruct the victim’s last hours while searching not only for a killer but for his own redemption.

The pistol appeared in his hand the way a dove appears in the hand of a good magician, as if it materialized out of thin air. “You think I won’t do it right here in the open. But you’d be surprised. . . . You’ll drop before you get the breath to scream.” 
 
The truck driver is decked out like a rhinestone cowboy, only instead of a guitar he’s slinging a gun—and Odd Thomas is on the wrong end of the barrel. Though he narrowly dodges a bullet, Odd can’t outrun the shocking vision burned into his mind . . . or the destiny that will drive him into a harrowing showdown with absolute evil.

DEEPLY ODD
 
How do you make sure a crime that hasn’t happened yet, never does? That’s the critical question facing Odd Thomas, the young man with a unique ability to commune with restless spirits and help them find justice and peace. But this time, it’s the living who desperately need Odd on their side. Three helpless innocents will be brutally executed unless Odd can intervene in time. Who the potential victims are and where they can be found remain a mystery. The only thing Odd knows for sure is who the killer will be: the homicidal stranger who tried to shoot him dead in a small-town parking lot. 

With the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock riding shotgun and a network of unlikely allies providing help along the way, Odd embarks on an interstate game of cat and mouse with his sinister quarry. He will soon learn that his adversary possesses abilities that may surpass his own and operates in service to infinitely more formidable foes, with murder a mere prelude to much deeper designs. Traveling across a landscape haunted by portents of impending catastrophe, Odd will do what he must and go where his path leads him, drawing ever closer to the dark heart of his long journey—and, perhaps, to the bright light beyond.

In the aftermath of a colossal battle, Daenerys Targaryen rules with her three dragons as queen of a city built on dust and death. But Daenerys has thousands of enemies, and many have set out to find her. Fleeing from Westeros with a price on his head, Tyrion Lannister, too, is making his way east—with new allies who may not be the ragtag band they seem. And in the frozen north, Jon Snow confronts creatures from beyond the Wall of ice and stone, and powerful foes from within the Night’s Watch. In a time of rising restlessness, the tides of destiny and politics lead a grand cast of outlaws and priests, soldiers and skinchangers, nobles and slaves, to the greatest dance of all.

Don’t miss the thrilling sneak peek of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Six, The Winds of Winter

TC Tidbit: 11 Tactics To Keep Your Reading Choice A Secret

Hilarious!  Check out the article from Dustin Kurtz from Melville House HERE.

Our Highlands Ranch Staff Have Gatsby Fever!!!

All of these books, journals and t-shirts are available at all of the Tattered Cover stores--come in and shop or order them online!  And stay tuned for even MORE Gatsby goodies coming soon!

"A fascinating and at times mind-boggling book that will change the way you think about time." --Financial Times

Why does life speed up as we get older? Why does the clock in your head sometimes move at a different speed from the one on the wall? Time rules our lives, but how much do we understand it? And is it possible to retrain our brains and improve our relationship with it?

Drawing on the latest research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and biology, and using original research on the way memory shapes our understanding of time, the acclaimed writer and BBC broadcaster Claudia Hammond delves into the mysteries of time perception. Along the way, she introduces us to an extraordinary array of characters willing to go to great lengths in the interests of research, including the French speleologist Michel Siffre, who spends two months in an ice cave in complete darkness.
 
Time Warped offers insight into how to manage our time more efficiently, speed time up and slow it down at will, plan for the future with more accuracy, and, ultimately, use the warping of time to our own advantage.

Check out your sense of time with this little game on the author's website.

TC Tidbit: Do You Like Teen Reads? Then Simon and Schuster Has a Deal For You!

Pulseit is an online community for anyone that loves teen books! It’s where you can read free teen books and exclusive excerpts, heart comments, books and content that you love, and share your reviews on books, your ideas, and more. Plus – it’s free to join & participate!

So what are you waiting for? Click here to join now!

For more info on the program, head over to our FAQ (frequently asked questions) section!

“This is an indispensable book for anyone and everyone who takes cooking seriously.” —Jason Epstein, author of "Eating"

 

Four decades of memories from a gastronome who witnessed the food revolution from the (well-provisioned) trenches—a delicious tour through contemporary food history.

When Raymond Sokolov became food editor of The New York Times in 1971, he began a long, memorable career as restaurant critic, food historian, and author. Here he traces the food scene he reported on in America and abroad, from his pathbreaking dispatches on nouvelle cuisine chefs like Paul Bocuse and Michel Guérard in France to the rise of contemporary American food stars like Thomas Keller and Grant Achatz, and the fruitful collision of science and cooking in the kitchens of El Bulli in Spain, the Fat Duck outside London, and Copenhagen’s gnarly Noma.

Sokolov invites readers to join him as a privileged observer of the most transformative period in the history of cuisine with this personal narrative of the sensual education of an accidental gourmet. We dine out with him at temples of haute cuisine like New York’s Lutèce but also at a pioneering outpost of  Sichuan food in a gas station in New Jersey, at a raunchy Texas chili cookoff, and at a backwoods barbecue shack in Alabama, as well as at three-star restaurants from Paris to Las Vegas.

Steal the Menu is, above all, an entertaining and engaging account of a tumultuous period of globalizing food ideas and frontier-crossing ingredients that produced the unprecedentedly rich and diverse way of eating we enjoy today.

Listen to a radio interview with the author HERE.

“A dramatic, thoroughgoing investigation of the complexities of sexuality and gender.... A warmly human coming-of-age story, thanks to the fact that Max is such an appealing character. And so his desperate search for identity is gripping, emotionally engaging, and genuinely unforgettable.” --Booklist

The Walker family is good at keeping secrets from the world. They are even better at keeping them from each other.


Max Walker is a golden boy. Attractive, intelligent, and athletic, he’s the perfect son, the perfect friend, and the perfect crush for the girls in his school. He’s even really nice to his little brother. Karen, Max’s mother, is a highly successful criminal lawyer, determined to maintain the façade of effortless excellence she has constructed through the years. Now that the boys are getting older, now that she won’t have as much control, she worries that the façade might soon begin to crumble. Adding to the tension, her husband, Steve, has chosen this moment to stand for election to Parliament. The spotlight of the media is about to encircle their lives.


The Walkers are hiding something, you see. Max is special. Max is different. Max is intersex. When an enigmatic childhood friend named Hunter steps out of his past and abuses his trust in the worst possible way, Max is forced to consider the nature of his well-kept secret. Why won’t his parents talk about it? What else are they hiding from Max about his condition and from each other? The deeper Max goes, the more questions emerge about where it all leaves him and what his future holds, especially now that he’s starting to fall head over heels for someone for the first time in his life. Will his friends accept him if he is no longer the Golden Boy? Will anyone ever want him—desire him— once they know? And the biggest one of all, the question he has to look inside himself to answer: Who is Max Walker, really?


Written by twenty-five-year-old rising star Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy is a novel you’ll read in one sitting but will never forget; at once a riveting tale of a family in crisis, a fascinating exploration of identity and a coming-of-age story like no other.

Read a short interview with the author HERE.

TC Tidbt: "Live By Night" To Be A Movie

Read more about that HERE.

Part #3 of Lisa C.'s Books for Book Lovers Recommendations List

Lisa C. is ongoing events person for Tattered Cover as well as a Douglas County librarian who works with several branches for special events. One of the most popular are her Book Lover's Chats, at which she and other librarians give a crowded house of eager readers their opinions and recommendations of new and not so new books they love. Lisa shares her most recent list with us, this is part 3.  You can find the first two segments on the blog HERE and HERE.

Just click the cover to learn more about the book.