Randy Is Recommending:

A riveting portrait of the Gold Rush, by the award-winning author of Down the Great Unknown and The Forger's Spell.

In the spring of 1848, rumors began to spread that gold had been discovered in a remote spot in the Sacramento Valley. A year later, newspaper headlines declared "Gold Fever!" as hundreds of thousands of men and women borrowed money, quit their jobs, and allowed themselves- for the first time ever-to imagine a future of ease and splendor. In The Rush, Edward Dolnick brilliantly recounts their treacherous westward journeys by wagon and on foot, and takes us to the frenzied gold fields and the rowdy cities that sprang from nothing to jam-packed chaos. 

 

With an enthralling cast of characters and scenes of unimaginable wealth and desperate ruin, The Rush is a fascinating-and rollicking-account of the greatest treasure hunt the world has ever seen.

 

 

The spellbinding and revealing chronicle of Nazi-occupied Paris
 

On June 14, 1940, German tanks entered a silent and nearly deserted Paris. Eight days later, France accepted a humiliating defeat and foreign occupation. 

 

Subsequently, an eerie sense of normalcy settled over the City of Light. Many Parisians keenly adapted themselves to the situation-even allied themselves with their Nazi overlords. At the same time, amidst this darkening gloom of German ruthlessness, shortages, and curfews, a resistance arose. Parisians of all stripes-Jews, immigrants, adolescents, communists, rightists, cultural icons such as Colette, de Beauvoir, Camus and Sartre, as well as police officers, teachers, students, and store owners-rallied around a little known French military officer, Charles de Gaulle.

When Paris Went Black evokes with stunning precision the detail of daily life in a city under occupation, and the brave people who fought against the darkness. Relying on a range of resources---memoirs, diaries, letters, archives, interviews, personal histories, flyers and posters, fiction, photographs, film and historical studies---Rosbottom has forged a groundbreaking book that will forever influence how we understand those dark years in the City of Light.

 

 

A gripping and suspenseful novel about secrets, betrayal, and the power of the past.

Clive and Martha have been a couple since they met at university; they now have a young daughter, Eliza, and on the surface, all seems well in their family. But neither Martha nor young Eliza know that the story of this happy marriage harbors a secret scene: a momentary betrayal that could have destroyed the marriage before it even began. Only Clive knows about the trap door in their history but he's convinced that, with the intervening years, the incident has lost its power.

But when Eliza comes home from school one day and excitedly announces that she has a new piano teacher called Eliot Fox, the guise of domestic tranquility threatens to shatter. The enigmatic Eliot Fox knows the secret that Clive is desperate to keep hidden. As her presence in the family's life grows, so too does the ominous shadow of the past that looms over Clive.

Glazebrook's darkly suspenseful tale of a family in crisis reveals how seemingly ordinary lives can contain extraordinary acts of destruction. Told with intensity and penetrating emotion, Never Mind Miss Fox is a compelling tale of guilt, justice, and what it really means to make amends.

The highly anticipated return of Tony Earley, celebrated author of Jim the Boy

Two decades after his debut collection Here We Are in Paradise heralded Tony Earley as one of the most accomplished writers of his generation, the rueful, bittersweet, and riotous stories of Mr. Tall reestablish him as a mythmaker and tale spinner of the first rank. These stories introduce us not only to ordinary people seeking to live extraordinary lives, but also to the skunk ape (a southern variant of Bigfoot), the ghost of Jesse James, and a bone-tired Jack the Giant Killer. Whether it's Appalachia, Nashville, the Carolina Coast, or a make-believe land of talking dogs, each world Earley creates is indelible.