Fresh Ink: Spotlight on Debut Books of All Kinds

A wholly charming, sweetly funny story of one young good-hearted Italian man. It's about life, bicycles, the joy of the journey and the simple beauty of a life well-lived.  Luigi's Freedom Ride is a charming treat of a novel - as sunny, light and enjoyable as a strawberry gelato eaten in an Italian piazza on a summer's day. 

Luigi is a young Italian boy growing up in Tuscany in the 1920s, dreaming of cowboys and adventure, when a young Englishman, passing through on his way to Rome, gives him his first bicycle, thus sparking a lifelong passion. When World War II begins, Luigi enlists with the Bersaglieri, the Italian Army Cycling Corps (naturally), before unexpectedly finding himself fighting alongside the Partisans. Despite encountering great sorrow and tragedy, Luigi's zest for life remains undiminished, and his next adventure sees him cycling through the Holy Land, Turkey and Sri Lanka before finding an unexpected home - and an extraordinary surprise - in Australia.

An irrepressibly optimistic, sweetly funny story, Luigi's Freedom Ride is about life, bicycles and the joy of the journey - showing how even a small life, lived in the shadow of great events, can be rich in contentment and spirit.

Read an excerpt HERE.

Alan Murray is Deputy Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal and Executive Editor of WSJ.com. He is the author of Revolt in the Boardroom.

How Many of These Oscar Nominees Have You Read?

Fresh Ink: Spotlight on Debut Books of All Kinds

Hailed as "indelible" in Entertainment Weekly’s list of "20 Books We’ll Read in 2015", this gut-punch of a debut about love, grief, and family "unleashes one of the most comically arresting voices this side of Sam Lipsyte’s Homeland" (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

In Matt Sumell’s blazing first book, our hero Alby flails wildly against the world around him—he punches his sister (she deserved it), "unprotectos" broads (they deserved it and liked it), gets drunk and picks fights (all deserved), defends defenseless creatures both large and small, and spews insults at children, slow drivers, old ladies, and every single surviving member of his family. In each of these stories Alby distills the anguish, the terror, the humor, and the strange grace—or lack of—he experiences in the aftermath of his mother’s death. Swirling at the center of Alby’s rage is a grief so big, so profound, it might swallow him whole. As he drinks, screws, and jokes his way through his pain and heartache, Alby’s anger, his kindness, and his capacity for good bubble up when he (and we) least expect it. Sumell delivers "a naked rendering of a heart sorting through its broken pieces to survive.*"

Making Nice is a powerful, full-steam-ahead ride that will keep you laughing even as you try to catch your breath; a new classic about love, loss, and the fine line between grappling through grief and fighting for (and with) the only family you’ve got.

Punching Jackie

 Read "Punching Jackie" HERE.

“All Lateral” by Matt Sumell


Praise for the book: 
"Sumell’s shrapnel-sharp sense of humor is never more than a sentence away. By the time you’re finished, you’ll want more of Alby, which is good because his creator’s just getting started." ~GQ

"Indelible…an Everybro for the millennial set."~Entertainment Weekly

 "Unforgettable…The stories, narrated by the same character, Alby, about existing in the wake of his mother’s death are hilarious, wrenching, dirty, and heartbreaking all at once — I’m not entirely sure how Sumell pulls it off, but he does. Watch this book soar." ~Bustle’s 

"Sumell’s compulsively readable novel in stories introduces a restless underachiever as irresistible as he is detestable, surely one of the most morally, violently, socially complex personalities in recent literature…. Sumell’s debut is humbly macho, provoking outrage, pity, and finally tenderness. Perhaps this is a book readers will hate to love, but only because it feels, like Alby, all too real." ~Booklist

"From the first page, Sumell’s exceptional novel in stories unleashes one of the most comically arresting voices this side of Sam Lipsyte’s Homeland…Sumell’s debut demonstrates an almost painful compassion for the sinner in most of us, making Making Nice even more fun than eavesdropping in a confession booth."~Publishers Weekly

"A wickedly funny, deeply moving gut punch of a book."~Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins

"Making Nice will grab you by the throat, raise your blood pressure, and cause you to crack up in a crowd. It will also break your heart. When they’re writing the history of the best characters of our time, Alby will be there, telling the others to get in line." ~Matthew Thomas, author of We Are Not Ourselves

"Sumell nails something about his generation which is feat enough, but beneath the funniness and swagger and freshness and raw energy is a sincerity that is rare and true. In that way in particular I find this to be a tremendously hopeful book." ~Aimee Bender, author of The Girl In the Flammable Skirt

"To say that Matt Sumell is an original voice is an immense understatement. Making Nice is ferocious and merciful, comic and heartbreaking. It will turn you inside out." ~Ramona Ausubel, author of No One is Here Except All of Us

Punching Jackie

Fresh Ink: Spotlight on Debut Books of All Kinds

Each of us has the capacity to spot opportunities, invent products, and build businesses--even $100 million businesses.
How do some people turn ideas into enterprises that endure? Why do some people succeed when so many others fail? 

The Creator's Code unlocks the six essential skills that turn small notions into big companies. This landmark book is based on 200 interviews with today's leading entrepreneurs including the founders of LinkedIn, Chipotle, eBay, Under Armour, Tesla Motors, SpaceX, Spanx, Airbnb, PayPal, Jetblue, Gilt Groupe, Theranos, and Dropbox.

Over the course of five years, Amy Wilkinson conducted rigorous interviews and analyzed research across many different fields. From the creators of the companies ranging from Yelp to Chobani to Zipcar, she found that entrepreneurial success works in much the same way. Creators are not born with an innate ability to conceive and build $100 million enterprises. They work at it. They all share fundamental skills that can be learned, practiced, and passed on.

The Creator's Code reveals six skills that make creators of all kinds of endeavors breakthrough. These skills aren't rare gifts or slim chance talents. Entrepreneurship, Wilkinson demonstrates, is accessible to everyone. The book's insights provide core guidance for success in the new world of work.

 

Success Secrets: What 200 Leading Entrepreneurs Have in Common

Promoting Entrepreneurship

"The Creator's Code: The 6 Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs" by Amy Wilkinson


Praise for the book:
“Creators is the inspiring story of the men and women who are changing our world. Amy Wilkinson has cracked their code and given us all ways to join their ranks. This book is a game-changer and a life-changer.”~Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence

“Amy Wilkinson promises brilliant insight and delivers. If you’re an entrepreneur or a corporate executive working to stay ahead of the curve, read this book ASAP!” Joanna Barsh, author of Centered Leadership

“A leading talent of her generation, Amy Wilkinson has poured five years into wresting secrets of success from 200 top entrepreneurs and then boiled what she learned into six essential skills. The result is a fresh, insightful book.” ~David Gergen, professor of Public Service, codirector of the Center for Public Leadership, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

“The shelves groan with books written by entrepreneurs claiming to reveal their unique formula for success. But I like Amy Wilkinson’s more comprehensive, analytical approach. She’s interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs, and from that stack of data has distilled the skills that allowed them to rise to the top. The good news? These are skills that anyone can develop. The added bonus? Wilkinson has a ton of great stories and she tells them well.” ~Daniel H. Pink, author of To Sell is Human

“The Creator’s Code provides a roadmap for the next generation of entrepreneurs. Amy Wilkinson’s insights about entrepreneurship, in combination with stories of successes and failures, serves as an inspiration for those looking to create and build new businesses.” ~Steve Case, cofounder of AOL and Chairman of UP Global

“This book isn’t armchair rumination. It’s required reading for anyone lookingto build the next big thing.” ~David Kelley, cofounder of IDEO and the Stanford d.School

"Impressive." ~Publishers Weekly

Fresh Ink: Spotlight on Debut Books of All Kinds

At a time when women did not commonly travel unescorted, carry a rifle, sit down in bars, or have romantic liaisons with other women, Lucy Lobdell boldly set forth to earn men's wages. Lucy Lobdell did all of these things in a personal quest to work and be paid, to wear what she wanted, and love whomever she cared to. But to gain those freedoms she had to endure public scorn and wrestle with a sexual identity whose vocabulary had yet to be invented. In this riveting historical novel, William Klaber captures the life of a brave woman who saw well beyond her era.

The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell is the fictionalized account of Lucy's foray into the world of men and her inward journey to a new sexual identity. It is her promised memoir as hear and recorded a century later by William Klaber, an upstream neighbor. Meticulously researched and told with compassion and respect, this is historical fiction at its best. 

The author

 Learn more about Lobdell  HERE (and click through the pages at the bottom of each page)

Read an interview with the author HERE.

Was Lucy Lobdell Truly Transgender? 

Praise for the book:

"In The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell, William Klaber takes us on high-spirited journey of joy and hardship through a 19th century America that few of us could have ever imagined. Lucy Lobdell seems destined to live out a life of adventure from the moment she crosses over into a forbidden and secret world. Beautifully told, by the time I finished I felt I knew not only Lucy, but had a far better understanding of the America of her times. A first class novel about an truly unforgettable woman." ~Robert Hicks, author of A Separate Country

"William Klaber has created a complicated and heartbreaking heroine, or do I mean hero? Whether Lucy is living as a man or a woman, working as a music teacher or a hired gun, I was utterly absorbed in her adventures. A wonderful debut." ~Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street
"A superb novel. I feel as if I have walked through 19th century America at Lucy's side, celebrated and　grieved with her. Klaber tells the story of her adventures with grace and invisible artistry. This is beautiful retelling of a remarkable story, and a fitting tribute to its subject." ~Imogen Robertson, author of The Paris Winter

"So dead-on it’s uncanny . . . an early contender for the year’s ‘best’ lists." ~Booklist

Lucy

Also Lucy

"... I needed the pen name basically to get permission to take a sabbatical from my obligation for Farrar Straus. At this point, I wish it didn’t have a pen name, but at the time, I had my reasons." ~Richard Price

The electrifying tale of a New York City police detective under siege—by an unsolved murder, by his own dark past, and by a violent stalker seeking revenge.

Back in the run-and-gun days of the mid-1990s, when a young Billy Graves worked in the South Bronx as part of an aggressive anti-crime unit known as the Wild Geese, he made headlines by accidentally shooting a ten-year-old boy while struggling with an angel-dusted berserker on a crowded street. Branded as a loose cannon by his higher-ups, Billy spent years enduring one dead-end posting after another. Now in his early forties, he has somehow survived and become a sergeant in Manhattan Night Watch, a small team of detectives charged with responding to all post-midnight felonies from Wall Street to Harlem. Mostly, his unit acts as little more than a set-up crew for the incoming shift, but after years in police purgatory, Billy is content simply to do his job.

Then comes a call that changes everything: Night Watch is summoned to the four a.m. fatal slashing of a man in Penn Station, and this time Billy’s investigation moves beyond the usual handoff to the day tour. And when he discovers that the victim was once a suspect in the unsolved murder of a twelve-year-old boy—a savage case with connections to the former members of the Wild Geese—the bad old days are back in Billy's life with a vengeance, tearing apart enduring friendships forged in the urban trenches and even threatening the safety of his family.

Razor-sharp and propulsively written, The Whites introduces Harry Brandt—a new master of American crime fiction.

Richard Price on His New Novel, The Whites, and Using a ‘Transparent’ Pseudonym (click here to learn more).

Kate M. Is Recommending

Reporting from the cutting edge of scientific discovery, today's visionary thinkers target the greatest roadblocks to innovation.

Few truly new ideas are developed without first abandoning old ones. In the past, discoveries often had to wait for the rise of the next generation to see questions in a new light and let go of old truisms. Today, in a world that is defined by a rapid rate of change, staying on the cutting edge has as much to do with shedding outdated notions as adopting new ones. In this spirit, John Brockman, publisher of the online salon Edge.org ("the world's smartest website"--The Guardian), asked 175 of the world's most influential scientists, economists, artists, and philosophers: What scientific idea is ready for retirement?

Jared Diamond explores the diverse ways that new ideas emerge * Nassim Nicholas Taleb takes down the standard deviation * Richard Thaler and novelist Ian McEwan reveal the usefulness of "bad" ideas * Steven Pinker dismantles the working theory of human behavior * Richard Dawkins renounces essentialism * Sherry Turkle reevaluates our expectations of artificial intelligence * Physicist Andrei Linde suggests that our universe and its laws may not be as unique as we think * Martin Rees explains why scientific understanding is a limitless goal * Alan Guth rethinks the origins of the universe * Sam Harris argues that our definition of science is too narrow * Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek disputes the division between mind and matter * Lawrence Krauss challenges the notion that the laws of physics were preordained * plus contributions from Daniel Goleman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Nicholas Carr, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Matt Ridley, Stewart Brand, Sean Carroll, Daniel C. Dennett, Helen Fisher, Douglas Rushkoff, Lee Smolin, Kevin Kelly, Freeman Dyson, and others.

Menaker State Hospital is a curse, a refuge, a prison, a necessity, a nightmare, a salvation

When Dr. Lise Shields arrived at the correctional psychiatric facility five years ago, she was warned that many of its patients--committed by Maryland's judicial system for perpetrating heinous crimes--would never leave.

But what happens when a place like Menaker is corrupted, when it becomes a tool to silence the innocent, conceal injustice, contain secrets? Why is it that the newest patient does not seem to belong there, that the hospital administrator has fallen silent, and that Lise is being watched by two men with seemingly lethal intent? The answers are closer than she realizes and could cost her everything she holds dear.

In this chilling follow-up to The Absence of Mercy, author John Burley--a master of medical and psychological detail--showcases the many ways in which the dangers of the outside world pale in comparison to the horrors of the human mind.

With the compelling narrative tension and psychological complexity of the works of Laura Lippman, Dennis Lehane, Kate Atkinson, and Michael Connelly, Edgar Award-nominee Lou Berney's The Long and Faraway Gone is a smart, fiercely compassionate crime story that explores the mysteries of memory and the impact of violence on survivors--and the lengths they will go to find the painful truth of the events that scarred their lives.

In the summer of 1986, two tragedies rocked Oklahoma City. Six movie-theater employees were killed in an armed robbery, while one inexplicably survived. Then, a teenage girl vanished from the annual State Fair. Neither crime was ever solved.

Twenty-five years later, the reverberations of those unsolved cases quietly echo through survivors' lives. A private investigator in Vegas, Wyatt's latest inquiry takes him back to a past he's tried to escape--and drags him deeper into the harrowing mystery of the movie house robbery that left six of his friends dead.

Like Wyatt, Julianna struggles with the past--with the day her beautiful older sister Genevieve disappeared. When Julianna discovers that one of the original suspects has resurfaced, she'll stop at nothing to find answers.

As fate brings these damaged souls together, their obsessive quests spark sexual currents neither can resist. But will their shared passion and obsession heal them, or push them closer to the edge? Even if they find the truth, will it help them understand what happened, that long and faraway gone summer? Will it set them free--or ultimately destroy them?

An indispensable volume of poems, selected from almost four decades of work, that tracks the evolution of one of our most renowned contemporary poets, Pulitzer Prize winner Jorie Graham

Much awaited and long needed, From the New World--a sequence of poems from Jorie Graham's prior eleven books--offers more than a retrospect of this major poet's work. This selection, including several revised and new poems, creates a startlingly fresh trajectory through books whose brilliance and far-reaching innovations have significantly influenced the landscape of contemporary poetry, both in the United States and abroad. Graham's unique achievement is surprisingly recast in this illuminating new book, in which the concerns of the later work are seen already urgently pressing in the earliest. From the New World--part spiritual autobiography, part survival manual--tracks what it is to attempt wakefulness in this moment of human history.

From the early poems set in Tennessee and Kentucky, to the expansive embrace of the poet's childhood Rome or the Normandy of the Second World War, to the explorations of myth, art, faith, technology, and ultimately the fate of the planet itself--whose imperiled beauty and intricate complexity few poets have so powerfully confronted and celebrated--the book brings us face to face with our "New World." Our unprecedented historical, social, and ecological crises, reshaping life as we have known it, both in our persons and on the globe, rise in all their terror and deep mystery from these pages. How are we to be responsible, the book asks; how attend to drastic disappearance and still love? Graham's deeply sensual description, intellectually bold lyric action, and her ever-evolving musical and formal inventiveness have for decades now brought us an urgent report from a dazzlingly charted world--now ecstatic, now sober, always electric. We finally have, in one volume, the stunning story she has written to keep both art and the human spirit instantaneously yet enduringly alive.