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Find music featured on The World in The Music Service Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy John Bowe   Random House  Hardcover  352pp  $25.95    Add To Cart Bowe travels around the nation to report on the slave labor that our government and corporations depend on, but are trying their best to disavow or ignore. He presents a sobering look at the moral costs of the cheap goods to which our economy has grown so accustomed. The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey Candice Millard   Broadway  Softcover  432pp  $14.95    Add To Cart At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt's harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth. A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini   Penguin  Hardcover  384pp  $25.95    Add To Cart Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 William Dalrymple   Knopf  Hardcover  560pp  $30.00    Add To Cart Award-winning historian and travel writer William Dalrymple shapes his powerful retelling of this fateful course of events from groundbreaking material: previously unexamined Urdu and Persian manuscripts thatinclude Indian eyewitness accounts and records of the Delhi courts, police and administration during the siege. The Last Mughal is a revelatory work-the first to present the Indian perspective on the fall of Delhi-and has as its heart both the dazzling capital personified by Zafar and the stories of the individuals tragically caught up in one of the bloodiest upheavals in history. My Life In France Julia Child   Knopf  Hardcover  336pp  $25.95    Add To Cart In her own words, here is the captivating story of Julia Child's years in France, where she fell in love with French food and found 'her true calling.' From the moment the ship docked in Le Havre in the fall of 1948 and Julia watched the well-muscled stevedores unloading the cargo to the first perfectly soigné meal that she and her husband, Paul, savored in Rouen en route to Paris, where he was to work for the USIS, Julia had an awakening that changed her life. Soon this tall, outspoken gal from Pasadena, California, who didn't speak a word of French and knew nothing about the country, was steeped in the language, chatting with purveyors in the local markets, and enrolled in the Cordon Bleu. Once upon a Country: A Palestinian Life Sari Nusseibeh   Farrar, Straus and Giroux  Hardcover  560pp  $27.50    Add To Cart A prominent Palestinian's searching, anguished, deeply affecting autobiography, in which his life story comes to be the story of the recent history of his country. Sari Nusseibeh’s autobiography is a remarkable book—one in which his dramatic life story and that of his embattled country converge in a work of great passion, depth, and emotional power. Nusseibeh was raised to represent his country. His family’s roots in Palestine traced back to the Middle Ages, and his father was the governor of Jerusalem. Educated at Oxford, he was trained to build upon his father’s support for coexistence and a negotiated solution to the problems of the region. 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East Tom Segev   Henry Holt  Hardcover  688pp  $35.00    Add To Cart From Israel’s leading historian, a sweeping history of 1967—the war, what led up to it, what came after, and how it changed everything Tom Segev’s acclaimed works One Palestine, Complete and The Seventh Million overturned accepted views of the history of Israel. Now, in 1967—a number-one bestseller in Hebrew—he brings his masterful skills to the watershed year when six days of war reshaped the country and the entire region. Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps Julie Peteet   University of Pennsylvania Press  Hardcover  260pp  $55.00    Add To Cart Landscape of Hope and Despair traces the dialectic of place and cultural identification through the initial despair of the 1950s and early 1960s to the tumultuous days of the resistance and the violence of the Lebanese civil war and its aftermath. Most significantly, this study articulates space, place, and identity to construct an alternative to the received national narratives of Palestinian society and history." The stories told here form a larger picture of these refugees as a people struggling to recreate their sense of place and identity and add meaning to their surroundings through the uses of culture and memory. Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood Ibtisam Barakat   Farrar, Straus and Giroux  Hardcover  192pp  $16.00    Add To Cart In this groundbreaking memoir set in Ramallah during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Ibtisam Barakat captures what it is like to be a child whose world is shattered by war. Transcending the particulars of politics, this illuminating and timely book provides a telling glimpse into a little-known culture that has become an increasingly important part of the puzzle of world peace. Macedonia Jimmy Carter   Simon & Schuster  Softcover  288pp  $15.00    Add To Cart In this book President Carter shares his intimate knowledge of the history of the Middle East and his personal experiences with the principal actors, and he addresses sensitive political issues many American officials avoid. Pulling no punches, Carter prescribes steps that must be taken for the two states to share the Holy Land without a system of apartheid or the constant fear of terrorism. Macedonia Harvey Pekar   Random House  Softcover  160pp  $17.95    Add To Cart In this unforgettable story, Roberson traveled to far-off Macedonia to find out how a country that had edged dangerously close to the brink of violence had somehow managed to avoid all-out war at a time when many believe violence is an unavoidable consequence of the modern world. I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody Sinan Antoon   City Lights  Softcover  168pp  $11.95    Add To Cart An inventory of the General Security headquarters in central Baghdad reveals an obscure manuscript. Written by a young man in detention, the prose moves from prison life, to adolescent memories, to frightening hallucinations, and what emerges is a portrait of life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Road from Ar Ramadi Camilo Mejia   New Press  Hardcover  288pp  $24.95    Add To Cart Staff Sgt. Mejia became the new face of the antiwar movement in early 2004 when he applied for a discharge from the Army as a conscientious objector. After serving in the Army for nearly nine years, he was the first known Iraq veteran to refuse to fight. He was eventually convicted of desertion by a military court and sentenced to a year in prison. American Visa Juan De Recacoechea   Akashic Books  Softcover   257pp  $14.95    Add To Cart Armed with fake papers, a handful of gold nuggets, and a snazzy custom-made suit, an unemployed schoolteacher with a singular passion for detective fiction sets out from small-town Bolivia on a desperate quest for an American visa, his best hope for escaping his painful past and reuniting with his grown son in Miami. Witness: One of the Great Correspondents of the Twentieth Century Tells Her Story Ruth Gruber   Knopf  Hardcover   288pp  $27.50    Add To Cart With her perfect memory (and plenty of zip), ninety-five-year-old Ruth Gruber–adventurer, international correspondent, photographer, maker of (and witness to) history, responsible for rescuing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees during World War II and after–tells her story in her own words and photographs. In Witness, Gruber writes about what she saw and shows us, through her haunting and life-affirming photographs–taken on each of her assignments–the worlds, the people, the landscapes, the courage, the hope, the life she witnessed up close and firsthand The Dry White Season Andre Brink   Harper Collins  Softcover   316pp  $13.95    Add To Cart Ben Du Toit is a white schoolteacher in suburban Johannesburg in a dark time of intolerance and state-sanctioned apartheid. A simple, apolitical man, he believes in the essential fairness of the South African government and its policies—until the sudden arrest and subsequent "suicide" of a black janitor from Du Toit's school. Haunted by new questions and desperate to believe that the man's death was a tragic accident, Du Toit undertakes an investigation into the terrible affair—a quest for the truth that will have devastating consequences for the teacher and his family, as it draws him into a lethal morass of lies, corruption, and murder. Before I Forget Andre Brink   Sourcebooks  Hardcover   384pp  $26.00    Add To Cart Chris Minaar is a writer, a distinguished South African writer, an old writer and a writer who has lost his gift for the word. That is, until, he meets Rachel, a woman destined to become the great love of his life, a love greater for being unfulfilled. Before I Forget is the final act of Chris's creative life; it is the coming together of all the chaotic pieces of his existence. It is much more than the story of how he met Rachel; it is the story of his life and his lifetime of loves. There are brief affairs, extended affairs, even a marriage and in all of them we find Chris retelling his joys and pains in such a way that they move us to tears and beyond. Erotic, searingly honest, elegiac and one of the most profoundly moving novels of Andre Brink's illustrious career, this is the history of a life set against the history of a nation and, more than anything, a tribute to lost lovers and our very ability to love at all. Abyssinian Chronicles Moses Isegawa   Knopf  Softcover   480pp  $15.00    Add To Cart Like an African Midnight's Children or One Hundred Years of Solitude, this epic generational saga set in Uganda tells a story of the twentieth century that is seminal in its scope and vision. Moses Isegawa's unforgettable tale is centered around the coming-of-age of Mugezi, a charming and quick-witted young man who manages to make it through the hellish reign of Idi Amin and experiences firsthand the most crushing aspects of Ugandan society. He withstands his distant father's oppression, his mother's cruelty in the name of Catholic zeal, and the ravages of war, poverty, and AIDS. Through it all he is miraculously able to keep a hopeful and even occasionally bemused outlook on life. In the end his hard-won observations form a cri de coeur for a people shaped by the untold losses of the postcolonial African experience. Mugezi's odyssey, from a small rural community to the city of Kampala and, ultimately, across the borders of Uganda, is a riveting work from a powerful, passionate, and humorous new literary voice. Snakepit Moses Isegawa   Knopf  Softcover   272pp  $14.00    Add To Cart Bat Katanga is a Ugandan just returned to his homeland after two years in Britain. While he completed a postgraduate degree at Cambridge, he watched from afar as "flag independence [gave] way to economic independence" in Uganda, his chances to make a fortune there increasing with each "reform" imposed by Idi Amin. Now, when Bat lands a job as Bureaucrat Two in the Ministry of Power and Communications, he feels himself entering the top echelons of government, his sense of honor and honesty firmly intact: "Everything seemed to have been building to this moment, his triumphant entry into the bastions of power." But when he is threatened into taking a bribe from a Saudi prince, he unwittingly begins a journey - both psychological and physical - into the darkest and most dangerous precincts of the madness that was Amin's Uganda. The Savage Detectives Roberto Bolaño    Farrar, Straus  Hardcover   592pp  $27.00    Add To Cart New Year's Eve, 1975: Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, founders of the visceral realist movement in poetry, leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala. Their quest: to track down the obscure, vanished poet Cesárea Tinajero. A violent showdown in the Sonora desert turns search to flight; twenty years later Belano and Lima are still on the run. The explosive first long work by "the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time" (Ilan Stavans, Los Angeles Times), The Savage Detectives follows Belano and Lima through the eyes of the people whose paths they cross in Central America, Europe, Israel, and West Africa. This chorus includes the muses of visceral realism, the beautiful Font sisters; their father, an architect interned in a Mexico City asylum; a sensitive young follower of Octavio Paz; a foul-mouthed American graduate student; a French girl with a taste for the Marquis de Sade; the great-granddaughter of Leon Trotsky; a Chilean stowaway with a mystical gift for numbers; the anorexic heiress to a Mexican underwear empire; an Argentinian photojournalist in Angola; and assorted hangers-on, detractors, critics, lovers, employers, vagabonds, real-life literary figures, and random acquaintances. Amulet Roberto Bolaño    New Directions  Hardcover   192pp  $21.95    Add To Cart Amulet is a monologue, like Bolaño's acclaimed debut in English, By Night in Chile. The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan woman who moved to Mexico in the 1960s, becoming the "Mother of Mexican Poetry," hanging out with the young poets in the cafés and bars of the University. She's tall, thin, and blonde, and her favorite young poet in the 1970s is none other than Arturo Belano (Bolaño's fictional stand-in throughout his books). As well as her young poets, Auxilio recalls three remarkable women: the melancholic young philosopher Elena, the exiled Catalan painter Remedios Varo, and Lilian Serpas, a poet who once slept with Che Guevara. And in the course of her imaginary visit to the house of Remedios Varo, Auxilio sees an uncanny landscape, a kind of chasm. This chasm reappears in a vision at the end of the book: an army of children is marching toward it, singing as they go. The children are the idealistic young Latin Americans who came to maturity in the '70s, and the last words of the novel are: "And that song is our amulet." Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 William Dalrymple   Knopf  Hardcover   560pp  $30.00    Add To Cart On a hazy November afternoon in Rangoon, 1862, a shrouded corpse was escorted by a small group of British soldiers to an anonymous grave in a prison enclosure. As the British Commissioner in charge insisted, "No vestige will remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Moghuls rests. Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last Mughal Emperor, was a mystic, an accomplished poet and a skilled calligrapher. But while his Mughal ancestors had controlled most of India, the aged Zafar was king in name only. Deprived of real political power by the East India Company, he nevertheless succeeded in creating a court of great brilliance, and presided over one of the great cultural renaissances of Indian history. In the Country of Men Hisham Matar   Random House  Hardcover   246pp  $22.00    Add To Cart On a white-hot day in Tripoli, Libya, in the summer of 1979, nine-year-old Suleiman is shopping in the market square with his mother. His father is away on business - but Suleiman is sure he has just seen him, standing across the street in a pair of dark glasses. But why isn't he waving? And why doesn't he come over when he knows Suleiman's mother is falling apart?" Whispers and fears intensify around Suleiman: his best friend's father disappears and is next seen being interrogated on state television; a man parks his car outside the house every day and asks strange questions; and his mother frantically burns his father's books. As Suleiman begins to wonder whether his father has disappeared for good, it feels as if the walls of his home will break with the secrets that are being held within. We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese Elizabeth M. Norman   Simon & Schuster  Softcover   352pp  $14.95    Add To Cart In the fall of 1941, the Philippines was a gardenia-scented paradise for the American Army and Navy nurses stationed there. War was a distant rumor, life a routine of easy shifts and evenings of dinner and dancing under the stars. On December 8 all that changed, as Japanese bombs rained on American bases in Luzon, and the women's paradise became a fiery hell. Caught in the raging battle, the nurses set up field hospitals in the jungles of Bataan and the tunnels of Corregidor, where they saw the most devastating injuries of war, and suffered the terrors of shells and shrapnel. But the worst was yet to come. As Bataan and Corregidor fell, a few nurses escaped, but most were herded into internment camps enduring three years of fear and starvation. Once liberated, they returned to an America that at first celebrated them, but later refused to honor their leaders with the medals they clearly deserved. Here, in letters, diaries, and firsthand accounts, is the story of what really happened during those dark days, woven together in a compelling saga of women in war. The Story of French Jean-Benoît Nadeau   St. Martin's Press  Hardcover   448pp  $25.95    Add To Cart Why does everything sound better if it's said in French? That fascination is at the heart of The Story of French, the first history of one of the most beautiful languages in the world that was, at one time, the pre-eminent language of literature, science and diplomacy. Nadeau and Barlow chart the history of a language spoken as a native tongue by 130 million people around the globe. The first document written in the French was signed by the sons of Charlemagne in 832. After this, Latin was purged from the courts of France by Francois 1st, giving root to French speakers' 21st century obsession with language protection. The obsession progressed as Cardinal Richelieu established the French Academy, a group entrusted with the responsibility of keeping the language pure and eloquent. As French circled the globe, the international cast of characters included Montaigne, Catherine the Great, Frederic II of Prussia, the guides of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Jules Verne, and others. Let Nadeau and Barlow guide you through the story of a language used to write some of the world's great masterpieces of literature, construct some of the most important documents of diplomacy, bedevil millions with its vagaries of pronunciation and beguile everyone with its beauty. Blood and Volume: Inside New York's Israeli Mafia Dave Copeland   Barricade Books  Hardcover   288pp  $24.95    Add To Cart Blood and Volume: Inside New York's Israeli Mafia by Dave Copeland reads like fiction but is absolutely all true. Ron Gonen ran a multi-million dollar drug distribution and contract murder syndicate in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan in the 1980's. With associates Ron Efrainm and Johnny Attias, the money was coming in fast. Closest in comparison is Henry Hill's story, which was made into a movie, Goodfellas. Gonen was manipulative and charismatic, traveling between Tel Aviv and New York, doing deals until it all unraveled. He saw the helicopter over his house and knew it was over. After his arrest he exchanged information for the witness protection program. Lest the reader think he is enjoying the ill-gotten-gains of his crimes, the morality tale here is that he is living somewhere unrevealed with his family, eking out a modest income and even borrowing a few dollars from his mother to get by. The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family Martha Raddatz   Penguin  Hardcover   310pp  $24.95    Add To Cart In April 2004, soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division were on a routine patrol in Sadr City, Iraq, when they came under surprise attack. Over the course of the next forty-eight hours, 8 Americans would be killed and more than 70 wounded. Back home, as news of the attack began filtering in, the families of these same men, neighbors in Fort Hood, Texas, feared the worst. In time, some of the women in their circle would receive "the call"-the notification that a husband or brother had been killed in action. So the families banded together in anticipation of the heartbreak that was certain to come. The firefight in Sadr City marked the beginning of the Iraqi insurgency, and Martha Raddatz has written perhaps the most riveting account of hand-to-hand combat to emerge from the war in Iraq. This intimate portrait of the close-knit community of families Stateside-the unsung heroes of the military -distinguishes The Long Road Home from other stories of modern warfare, showing the horror, terror, bravery, and fortitude not just of the soldiers who were wounded and killed but also of the wives and children whose lives now are forever changed. Aya Marguerite Abouet   Drawn & Quarterly  Hardcover   105pp  $19.95    Add To Cart Ivory Coast, 1978. Family and friends gather at Aya's house every evening to watch the country's first television ad campaign promoting the fortifying effects of Solibra, "the strong man's beer." It's a golden time, and the nation, too--an oasis of affluence and stability in West Africa--seems fueled by something wondrous. Aya tells the story of its nineteen-year-old heroine, the studious and clear-sighted Aya, her easygoing friends Adjoua and Bintou, and their meddling relatives and neighbors. It's a breezy and wryly funny account of the desire for joy and freedom, and of the simple pleasures and private troubles of everyday life in Yop City. An unpretentious and gently humorous story of an Africa we rarely see-spirited, hopeful, and resilient--Aya won the 2006 award for Best First Album at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. Clément Oubrerie's warm colors and energetic, playful lines connect expressively with Marguerite Abouet's vibrant writing. How I Became A Nun Cesar Aira   New Directions  Softcover   128pp  $13.95    Add To Cart "My story, the story of 'how I became a nun,' began very early in my life; I had just turned six. The beginning is marked by a vivid memory, which I can reconstruct down to the last detail. Before, there is nothing, and after, everything is an extension of the same vivid memory, continuous and unbroken, including the intervals of sleep, up to the point where I took the veil...." So starts César Aira's astounding "autobiographical" novel. Intense and perfect, this invented narrative of childhood experience bristles with dramatic humor at each stage of growing up: a first ice cream, school, reading, games, friendship. The novel begins in Aira's hometown, Coronel Pringles. As self-awareness grows, the story rushes forward in a torrent of anecdotes which transform a world of uneventful happiness into something else: the anecdote becomes adventure, and adventure, fable, and then legend. Between memory and oblivion, reality and fiction, César Aira's How I Became a Nun retains childhood's main treasures: the reality of fable and the delirium of invention. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier Ishmael Beah   Simon & Schuster   Hardcover  229pp  $22.00    Add To Cart What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived. In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty. 365 Ways To Change the World: How to Make a Difference One Day at a Time Michael Norton   Simon & Schuster   Softcover  390 pp  $14.00    Add To Cart You want to make a difference in the world, but don't know where to begin. Now you can. Here is just the guide to lots of exciting ways that are more personal and fun than merely writing a check. For every day of the year, 365 Ways to Change the World is packed with information and ideas that don't take a lot of special skills to put into action, but will achieve something positive. Farewell Waltz Milan Kundera   Harper Collins   Softcover  278 pp  $12.95    Add To Cart Perhaps the most brilliantly plotted and sheerly entertaining of Milan Kundera's novels, Farewell Waltz poses the most serious questions with a blasphemous lightness that makes us see that the modern world has deprived us even of the right to tragedy. This beautiful new translation, made from the French text prepared by the novelist himself, fully reflects his own tone and intentions. As such it offers an opportunity for both the discovery and the rediscovery of one of the very best of a great writer's work. The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts Milan Kundera   Harper Collins   Hardcover  176 pp  $22.95    Add To Cart In this entertaining and stimulating essay, Kundera deftly sketches out his personal view of the history and value of the novel in Western civilization. Moomin Book One: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip Tove Jansson   Drawn & Quarterly   Hardcover  95 pp  $19.95    Add To Cart Tove Jansson is revered around the world as one of the foremost children's authors of the twentieth century for her illustrated chapter books regarding the magical worlds of her creation, the Moomins. The Moomins saw life in many forms but debuted to its biggest audience ever on the pages of the world's largest newspaper, the London Evening News, in 1954. The strip was syndicated in newspapers around the world with millions of readers in forty countries. Moomin Book One is the first volume of Drawn & Quarterly's publishing plan to reprint the entire strip drawn by Jansson before she handed over the reins to her brother Lars in 1960. This is the first time the strip will be published in any form in North America and will deservedly place Jansson among the international cartooning greats of the last century. The Anatomy of Revolution Crane Brinton   Knopf   Softcover  320 pp  $11.00    Add To Cart A comparative history of the English, American, French and Russian revolutions The Paradox of American Power Joseph S. Nye   Oxford University Press   Softcover  222 pp  $15.95    Add To Cart Nye, former assistant secretary of defense under Clinton and current dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, offers a prescription for America's new role in the world that calls for a broader, more responsible, and cooperative relationship with the rest of the world. Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov   Penguin   Softcover  448 pp  $12.95    Add To Cart Written during the darkest, most repressive period of Stalin's reign, this novel gives substance to the notion of artistic and religious freedom. Despite its devastating satire of Soviet life and its audacious portrayals of Christ and Satan, the manuscript had somehow eluded Russian censors, and the enthusiasm of its readers assured the novel immediate and enduring success. "The New York Times Book Review" calls this "one of the truly great Russian novels of this century". The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini   Penguin   Softcover  384 pp  $14.00    Add To Cart Privileged young narrator Amir comes of age during the last peaceful days of the monarchy in Afghanistan, then must endure revolution, invasion and a country's long struggle to triumph over violent forces. Zapata and the Mexican Revolution John Womack   Knopf   Softcover  480 pp  $17.00    Add To Cart Cities of the Poor Suggested Reading Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World Robert Neuwirth   Taylor & Francis   Softcover  335 pp  $18.95    Add To Cart As many as one out of six people on earth is an illegal squatter. In Shadow Cities, journalist Robert Neuwirth describes his travels through the megalopolises of Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, and Nairobi to discover what life is like for that 1 billion. What he finds defies many of the stereotypes of grime- and crime-ridden Third World slums. Planet of Slums Mike Davis   Verso   Hardcover  256 pp  $24.00    Add To Cart Mike Davis highlights the world's inexorable move towards a planet of slums and asks if the massive growth of global urban poverty will lead no only to great human catastrophe but to global instability. Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found Suketu Mehta   Knopf Publishing   Softcover  560 pp  $16.00    Add To Cart A brilliantly illuminating portrait of Bombay and its people-a book as vast, diverse, and rich in experience, incident, and sensation as the city itself-from an award-winning Indian-American fiction writer and journalist. Laughter in the Dark Vladimir Nabokov   New Directions   Softcover  308 pp  $12.95    Add To Cart Albinus, a respectable, middle-aged man and aspiring filmmaker, abandons his wife for a lover half his age: Margot, who wants to become a movie star herself. When Albinus introduces her to Rex, an American movie producer, disaster ensues. What emerges is an elegantly sardonic and irresistibly ironic novel of desire, deceit, and deception, a curious romance set in the film world of Berlin in the 1930s. Restless William Boyd   Bloomsbury   Hardcover  324 pp  $24.95    Add To Cart "I am Eva Delectorskaya," Sally Gilmartin announces, and so on a warm summer afternoon in 1976 her daughter, Ruth, learns that everything she ever knew about her mother was a carefully constructed lie. Sally Gilmartin is a respectable English widow living in picturesque Cotswold village; Eva Delectorskaya was a rigorously trained World War II spy, a woman who carried fake passports and retreated to secret safe houses, a woman taught to lie and deceive, and above all, to never trust anyone. Persian Girls: A Memoir Nahid Rachlin   Penguin   Hardcover  304 pp  $23.95    Add To Cart A memoir by the author of Foreigner and Married to a Stranger describes how she was raised by a beloved widow aunt in Iran, oppressed by a domineering father and restrictive Muslim laws, and torn between the cultures of her home and America. Life's Wisdom Naguib Mahfouz   Cairo Press   Hardcover  128 pp  $19.95    Add To Cart Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt’s Nobel laureate for literature, was born in an old quarter of Cairo in 1911. His study of philosophy at what is now Cairo University greatly influenced his works,as did his wide readings, and his work in the government and in the Cinema Organization. Life’s Wisdom is a unique collection of quotations selected from this great author’s works, offering philosophical insights on themes such as childhood, youth, love, marriage, war, freedom, death, the supernatural, the afterlife, the soul, immortality, and many other subjects that take us through life’s journey. Kali and the Rat Snake Zai Whitaker   Kane/Miller    Age Range: 6 to 9   Hardcover  32 pp  $15.95    Add To Cart Whitaker not only gives us a picture of a faraway area—southern India—but she also depicts the prejudice of students presented with a classmate who is from a different class or culture. Kali hates school even though he is doing well there. When it was his turn to tell his name, his village, and his father's occupation, he was proud to say that his father was a snake catcher. But the other children laughed at him. Now he sits and eats alone, ashamed even of his unusual snack. It is only when a snake appears on the classroom roof, terrifying the teacher and students, that Kali gains respect and acceptance—for he knows how to capture it. What Elephant? Geneiveve Cote   Kids Can Press    Age Range: 3 to 7   Hardcover  32 pp  $16.95    Add To Cart George finds an elephant in his house but no one will believe him. George thinks he is dreaming as the elephant takes a shower and eats all his food. He does not want to tell his friend Pip because he thinks that Pip will think he is crazy. George is very upset when he realizes that Pip cannot see the elephant in his garden. When their friend Maggie comes by, she sees the elephant but does not admit it because she thinks she is seeing things. Other friends stop by, but they think that they must be "mad, crazy, or nuts." Suddenly, a man from the circus runs into the garden and shouts that Shiraz is his elephant that ran away. George and all his friends are relieved that they are not crazy after all. At the conclusion of the book, the friends are faced with another surprise. How the Amazon Queen Fought the Prince of Egypt Tamara Bower   Simon & Schuster    Age Range: 7 to 11   Hardcover  40 pp  $16.95    Add To Cart Queen Serpot rules the Land of Women, where the Amazon women live free, without men, and hunt and fight their own battles. But one day their peace is broken. An army of Egyptian soldiers is approaching their land, led by their prince, Pedikhons. This story of love and war is based on an actual Egyptian scroll from the Greco-Roman period. Hieroglyphic translations of key phrases, intricate paintings in the Egyptian and Assyrian styles, and extensive notes about both cultures enrich this fascinating, untold legend. The Mzungu Boy Meja Mwangi   House of Anansi   Age Range: 10 to 12   Hardcover  150 pp  $15.95    Add To Cart For Kariuki, life in a small village in Kenya is one great adventure. The best part of his day is the walk home from school, when he is free from both his bullying headmaster and his mother’s long list of chores. The landscape around his village is beautifully wild, and Kariuki knows it well. One day Kariuki meets Nigel, a boy from England who has come to visit his grandfather, the fearsome Bwana Ruin, who owns the farm where the villagers work. The villagers call Nigel the mzungu boy (westerner), and view him with suspicion and fear. But not Kariuki. In this novel, the author captures a time of innocence, wild beauty, and the growing violence that eventually changed the entire structure of colonial Africa. Arabesque Claudia Roden   Knopf  Hardcover  352 pp  $35.00    Add To Cart In this enchanting cookbook filled with history, stories, and more than 150 recipes, the leading authority on Middle Eastern and North African food revisits the three countries with the most exciting cuisine, discovering new dishes and reworking classics to make them easier to make--and more delicious--for today's home cook. 100 color photos. Bleeding Hearts Ian Rankin   Little, Brown & Co  Hardcover  384 pp  $24.99    Add To Cart A master of modern mystery and the award-winning author of "Resurrection Man"pens a page-turning novel of assassins and double-crossing. Kamikaze Diaries Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney   Univ of Chicago  Hardcover  227 pp  $25.00    Add To Cart This moving history presents diaries and correspondence left by members of the tokkotai and other Japanese student soldiers who perished during the war. A significant number of the kamikaze were university students who were drafted and forced to volunteer for this desperate military operation. Such young men were the intellectual elite of modern Japan: steeped in the classics and major works of philosophy, they took Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” as their motto. And in their diaries and correspondence, as Ohnuki-Tierney shows, these student soldiers wrote long and often heartbreaking soliloquies in which they poured out their anguish and fear, expressed profound ambivalence toward the war, and articulated thoughtful opposition to their nation’s imperialism. Seeing Jose Saramago   Harcourt  Hardcover  307 pp  $25.00    Add To Cart From the Nobel Prize-winning author of "Blindness" comes this follow-up, set in the same capital city four years after being hit by an epidemic of blindness. What begins as a satire on governments and the sometimes dubious efficacy of the democratic system turns into something far more sinister. Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea Guy Delisle   Drawn & Quarterly  Hardcover  176 pp  $19.95    Add To Cart A westerner's visit into North Korea, told in the form of a graphic novel. Famously referred to as one of the "Axis of Evil" countries, North Korea remains one of the most secretive and mysterious nations in the world today. In early 2001 cartoonist Guy Delisle became one of the few Westerners to be allowed access to the fortresslike country. While living in the nation's capital for two months on a work visa for a French film animation company, Delisle observed what he was allowed to see of the culture and lives of the few North Koreans he encountered; his findings form the basis of this remarkable graphic novel. "Pyongyang "is an informative, personal, and accessible look at a dangerous and enigmatic country. Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security-Obsessed World Eve Ensler   Random House  Hardcover  224 pp  $21.95    Add To Cart From the bestselling author of "The Vagina Monologues" comes an illuminating, provocative look at America's obsession with security in a post-9/11 world--and how people can experience freedom and true fulfillment by letting it go. In the Line of Fire: A Memoir Pervez Musharraf   Simon & Schuster  Hardcover  368 pp  $28.00    Add To Cart In this unprecedented event, the president of one of the world's most crucial nations offers his candid thoughts on Pakistan's confrontations with India, 9/11 and its aftermath, on Israel, on bin Laden and al Queda, and on the status of women in Pakistan. A Woman In Jerusalem A. B. Yehoshua   Harcourt  Hardcover  256 pp  $25.00    Add To Cart A victim of a suicide bombing lies nameless in a hospital morgue, and a Jerusalem newspaper accuses her employer of "gross negligence and inhumanity." Overwhelmed by guilt, her employer entrusts the task of identifying and burying the victim to another employee. As the facts of the woman's life take shape, the employee yields to feelings of regret and atonement. Suite Francaise Irene Nemirovsky   Knopf  Hardcover  416 pp  $25.00    Add To Cart Suite Française is an extraordinary novel of life under Nazi occupation - recently discovered and published 64 years after the author's death in Auschwitz. In the early 1940s, Irène Némirovsky was a successful writer living in Paris. But she was also Jewish, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. Her two small daughters, aged 5 and 13, escaped, carrying with them, in a small suitcase, the manuscript - one of the great first-hand novelistic accounts of a way of life unravelling. Flaubert: A Biography Frederick Brown   Little Brown  Hardcover  640 pp  $35.00    Add To Cart Gustave Flaubert, whose Madame Bovary outraged the right-thinking bourgeoisie when it was first published in 1856, is brought to life here in all his singularity and brilliance. Frederick Brown's portrayal is of an artist fraught with contradictions, his wit and bravado merging into vulnerability. The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus Margaret Atwood   Canongate  Hardcover  199 pp  $18.00    Add To Cart Telling the story of Homer's "Odyssey" from the point of view of Penelope and her 12 hanged maids, the bestselling author of "Oryx and Crake" draws on Greek mythology for Volume 2 in the Myths series. A Short History of Myth Karen Armstrong   Canongate  Hardcover  159 pp  $18.00    Add To Cart Heralding a major series of retellings of international myths by authors from around the world, Armstrong's characteristically insightful and eloquent book serves as a brilliant and thought-provoking introduction to myth in the broadest sense. The Nimrod Flipout Etgar Keret   FSG  Softcover  176 pp  $12.00    Add To Cart Already featured on This American Life and Selected Shorts and in Zoetrope: All Story and L.A. Weekly, these short stories include a man who finds equal pleasure in his beautiful girlfriend and the fat, soccer-loving lout she turns into after dark; shrinking parents; a case of impotence cured by a pet terrier; and a pessimistic Middle Eastern talking fish. A bestseller in Israel, The Nimrod Flipout is an extraordinary collection from the preeminent Israeli writer of his generation. Gate of the Sun Elias Khoury   Archipelago Books  Hardcover  475 pp  $26.00    Add To Cart Gate of the Sun: Bab al-Shams is the first true magnum opus of the Palestinian saga. Through the passing of the beloved midwife and matriarch of the Shatila refugee camp outside Beirut, the reader enters a world of displacement, fear, and tenuous hope.' Total Chaos Jean-Claude Izzo   Europa Editions  Softcover  256 pp  $14.95    Add To Cart This first installment in the legendary "Marseilles Trilogy sees Fabio Montale turning his back on a police force marred by corruption and racism and taking the fight against the mafia into his own hands. Three Cups of Tea Greg Mortenson   Penguin  Hardcover  352 pp  $24.95    Add To Cart The inspiring account of one man’s campaign to build schools in the most dangerous,remote, and anti-American reaches of Asia. The Idea of Pakistan Stephen Philip Cohen   Brookings Institution Press  Hardcover  367 pp  $32.95    Add To Cart To probe beyond the headlines, Stephen Cohen, author of the prize-winning India: Emerging Power, offers a panoramic portrait of this complex country - from its origins as a homeland for Indian Muslims to a military-dominated state that has experienced uneven economic growth, political chaos, sectarian violence, and several nuclear crises with its much larger neighbor, India. The Cripple and His Talismans Anosh Irani   Algonquin Books  Hardcover  244 pp  $22.95    Add To Cart This dark, wry fable begins with the narrator waking up and discovering he is missing an arm. He has no idea how he lost it or how to find it. As he searches the chaotic, often surreal streets of Bombay, he meets an absurd and marvelous cast of characters who lead him to the master of the underworld. What the Body Remembers Shauna Singh Baldwin   Knopf  Softcover  496 pp  $16.00    Add To Cart Set in India during the 1947 Partition, this debut novel tells of two women married to the same man. Roop is a young girl, who is to become the second wife of a wealthy Sikh landowner. His first wife, Satya, failed to bear him children. Roop believes that she and Satya will be friends. But the relationship between the older and younger woman is far more complex. Shalimar the Clown Salman Rushdie   Random House  Hardcover  416 pp  $25.95    Add To Cart In this gripping international tale of love and revenge, and the ancient and modern conflicts from which they spring, a murder looks at first like a political assassination, but turns out to be passionately personal. A Writer at War V S Grossman   Knopf  Hardcover  400 pp  $27.50    Add To Cart An eyewitness account of the campaigns of the Eastern Front during World War II draws on the firsthand reporting of a special correspondent for The Red Star, the Red Army's newspaper, documenting the savage battles, the siege of Stalingrad, the great tank battle of Kursk, the defense of Moscow, and early revelations about the Holocaust. The Economy of Prestige James English   Knopf  Hardcover  400 pp  $29.95    Add To Cart This is a book about one of the great untold stories of modern cultural life: the remarkable ascendancy of prizes in literature and the arts. Such prizes and the competitions they crown are almost as old as the arts themselves, but their number and power and their consequences for society and culture at large, have expanded to an unprecedented degree in our day. Tales Told in Tents Sally Clayton   Lincoln  Hardcover  60 pp  $16.95    Add To Cart An internationally acclaimed storyteller recounts 12 exotic tales that were shared with her in storytelling tents in her journeys through Central Asia. Includes a glossary and brief note that reveal the richness of these little-known, faraway lands. The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature Peter Hunt Ed.   W W Norton  Slipcase Edition  2,200 pp  $65.00    Add To Cart This new Norton Anthology traces the remarkable innovation and enduring pleasures of children's literature. It includes 170 authors and illustrators of alphabets and animal fables, fairy tales and fantasy, picture books and nursery verse, among many other genres. Brave Charlotte Anu Stohner   Bloomsbury  Hardcover  32 pp  $16.95    Add To Cart Charlotte is different from all the other sheep. She likes to explore the world around her, climbing up trees and wandering near the dangerous road while the wary old sheep "tsk, tsk." But when danger strikes, only Charlotte is brave enough to go for help and save the day. This beautifully illustrated tale speaks to all shy little sheep who stand out from the crowd and aren't afraid to follow their dreams. Transformed: How Everyday Things Are Made Bill Slavin   Kids Can Press  Hardcover  160 pp  $24.95    Add To Cart CDs start out as sand. Blackboard chalk comes from tiny sea creatures. The objects all around us -- every single product in the world -- is made from elements found in nature. Discover how nature is transformed into more than sixty things we eat, drink, play with, wear or use every day. Mei Mei - Little Sister: Portraits from a Chinese Orphanage Richard Bowen   Chronicle Books  Hardcover  144 pp  $35.00    Add To Cart The Chinese believe an unseen red thread joins those in this life who are destined to connect. For photographer Richard Bowen, that thread led him to China's state-run welfare institutions, where there are thousands of children, primarily girls, growing up without families to take care of them. The Journey That Saved Curious George Louise Borden   Chronicle Books  Hardcover  144 pp  $35.00    Add To Cart Follow Hans and Margret Rey's amazing story of fleeing their Paris home in 1940 as the German army advanced in this book that resembles a travel journal and includes original photos, reproduced ticket stubs, and more. Full color. In Her Hands: Craftswomen Changing the World Paola Gianturco   Power House Books  Hardcover  240 pp  $35.00    Add To Cart Authors Paola Gianturco and Toby Tuttle have spent five years photographing, interviewing, and writing about craftswomen for "In Her Hands: Craftswomen Changing the World. The artisans' individual voices are heard throughout the book as the authors describe their encounters with the craftswomen; amusing, affecting journal entries relate to the authors' own experiences and reflections. Underdog: How I Survived the World's Most Outlandish Competitions Joshua Davis   Random House  Hardcover  224 pp  $21.95    Add To Cart A riotous and charming true tale, "The Underdog" tells the story of a young journalist's exploration of mankind's obsession with competition and the strange subcultures that encourage it. Devils on the Deep Blue Sea: The Dreams, Schemes and Showdowns That Built America's Cruise-Ship Empires Kristoffer Garin   Harper Collins  Hardcover  384 pp  $24.95    Add To Cart Few businesses in America today are as colorful, lucrative, and innovative as cruise shipping, and this is the first book to give readers a compelling behind-the-scenes look into these floating empires and the modern-day robber barons who shaped them.' Meet The Beatles: A Cultural History Of The Band That Shook Youth, Gender, And The World Steven Stark   Harper Collins  Hardcover  344 pp  $26.95    Add To Cart A history of the Beatles' influence on popular culture draws on interviews with numerous principals who surrounded the band and demonstrates their role in influencing women's identities, fashion trends, and other aspects of modern culture. This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace Swanee Hunt   Duke University Press  Hardcover  304 pp  $29.95    Add To Cart A collection of first-person accounts by twenty-six Bosnian women--representing a range of ethnic traditions and heritages--who are reconstructing their society following years of warfare offers a narrative framework designed to connect the women's stories to their experiences. In The Flesh Christa Wolf   Godine  Hardcover  224 pp  $24.95    Add To Cart Christa Wolf’s mesmerizing short novel – already a best seller in Germany – is a supreme work of political and philosophical insight by one of Europe’s greatest living writers. Alive with myth and metaphor, rich in historical and literary allusion, it draws a nuanced, witty, and utterly compelling portrait of a person and a society close to death yet still capable of recovery. The Diary of Ma Yan: The Struggles and Hopes of a Chinese Schoolgirl Ma Yan   Harper Collins  Hardcover  166 pp  $15.99    Add To Cart This diary of 14-year-old Ma Yan, who lived with her family in a drought-stricken corner of rural China, was published in Europe in 2001. It led the creation of an international fund for the education of Ma Yan and other poor children in her village. Behind the Lines Andrew Carroll   Scribner  Hardcover  512 pp  $30.00    Add To Cart From the editor of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller War Letters comes an even more powerful, more revealing collection of letters by soldiers and civilians from both sides in every major war in our history -- all discovered during Andrew Carroll's extraordinary journey to thirty-five countries around the world. Strange Times, My Dear: The Pen Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature Nahid Mozaffari   Arcade Publishing  Hardcover  494 pp  $27.95    Add To Cart A collection of work from modern Iranian writers--including short stories, novel excerpts, and poetry--offers an all-too-brief look at the literature and culture of a country whose cultural contributions have been forgotten and ignored since the Iranian revolution in 1979. Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China Rachel DeWoskin   Norton  Hardcover  304 pp  $24.95    Add To Cart A talented young writer working for an American company suddenly finds herself the star of a hugely successful Chinese soap opera called "Foreign Babes in Beijing." Part memoir, part travelogue, and part cultural study of China, this book captures China's ambivalent love/hate relationship with the West. Windows on the World Frederic Beigbeder   Hyperion  Hardcover  304 pp  $24.95    Add To Cart A provocative and poignant novel captures the individual voices of a group of diverse and doomed people who come together in one historical moment in the Windows on the World restaurant on September 11, 2001. A Sense of Duty: My Father, My American Journey Quang Pham   Random House  Hardcover  320 pp  $24.95    Add To Cart The author explores the inner conflicts of a young man caught in the often contradictory forces of national identity, loyalty, truth and trust in the aftermath of America's most divisive war. Savage Summit: The True Stories of the First Five Women Who Climbed K2 Jennifer Jordan   Harper Collins  Hardcover  300 pp  $24.95    Add To Cart An exhilarating story of victory and disaster, success and heartbreak, "Savage Summit" is a moving tribute to the five brave women who achieved the near-impossible by climbing the world's most feared mountain. See You at the Hall: Boston's Golden Era of Irish Music and Dance Susan J. Gedutis   Northeastern University Press  Hardcover  256 pp  $26.95    Add To Cart See You at the Hall brings to life the rich history of the "American capital of Galway" through the eyes of those who gathered and performed there. In this engaging look back at Boston's golden era of Irish traditional music, Susan Gedutis deftly weaves together engaging narrative with spirited personal reminiscences to trace the colorful dance hall period from its beginnings in the 1940s. Lipstick Jihad Azadeh Moaveni   Perseus Publishing  Hardcover  384 pp  $25.00    Add To Cart A young Iranian-American journalist returns to Tehran and discovers not only the oppressive and decadent life of her Iranian counterparts who have grown up since the revolution, but the pain of searching for a homeland that may not exist. Indian Home Cooking Suvir Saran   Crown  Hardcover  272 pp  $32.50    Add To Cart Suvir Saran, a renowned Indian-born chef and cooking teacher, teams up with American chef and "New York Times" food columnist Stephanie Lyness in the first book designed for people who love Indian food but are daunted by the thought of preparing it at home. The Yacoubian Building Humphrey Davies   American University  Hardcover  272 pp  $22.50    Add To Cart The Yacoubian Building holds all that Egypt was and has become over the 75 years since its namesake was built on one of downtown Cairo's main boulevards. Alaa Al Aswany's novel caused an unprecedented stir when it was first published in 2002 and has remained the world's best selling novel in the Arabic language since. God Lives in St. Petersburg and Other Stories Tom Bissell   Pantheon  Hardcover  212 pp  $20.00    Add To Cart In this exciting collection, the acclaimed author of "Chasing the Sun" turns his keenly observant eye to fiction with sometimes tragic, sometimes hilarious adventures and misadventures of Americans colliding with the unfamiliar in Central Asia. Satchmo Blows up the World Penny M. Von Eschen   Harvard  Hardcover  352 pp  $29.95    Add To Cart At the height of the ideological antagonism of the Cold War, the U.S. State Department unleashed an unexpected tool in its battle against Communism: jazz. From 1956 through the late 1970s, America dispatched its finest jazz musicians to the far corners of the earth, from Iraq to India, from the Congo to the Soviet Union, in order to win the hearts and minds of the Third World and to counter perceptions of American racism. Out There Ted Kerasote   Voyageur Press  Hardcover  160 pp  $16.95    Add To Cart Kerasote’s entertaining account of this journey down the Horton River toward the Arctic Ocean, through a stunning landscape of tundra and varied wildlife. Between navigating rapids, staying warm and dry in rainstorms, and avoiding grizzly bears, Ted and Len discuss the meaning of life, love, and solitude in a wired age. Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini   Penguin  Softcover  372 pp  $14.00    Add To Cart Privileged young narrator Amir comes of age during the last peaceful days of the monarchy in Afghanistan, then must endure revolution, invasion and a country's long struggle to triumph over violent forces. The Surgeon and the Shepherd Meg Ostrum   Nebraska  Hardcover  288 pp  $27.95    Add To Cart Of the thousands of people who escaped through the Pyrenees during World War II, at least one hundred owe their lives to a daring scheme that Belgian Charles Schepens masterminded in Mendive, a remote Basque village near the French-Spanish border. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Susanna Clarke   Bloomsbury   Hardcover  800 pp  $27.95    Add To Cart Sophisticated, witty, and ingeniously convincing, Clarke's magisterial novel weaves magic into a flawlessly detailed vision of historical England. She has created a world so thoroughly enchanting that it leaves readers longing for more. Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? Bill Martin   Holt  Hardcover  32 pp  $16.95    Add To Cart The author and illustrator team of the classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? turn their extraordinary talents ot the theme of animal conservation. The Most Magnificent Mosque Ann Jungman   American  Hardcover  32 pp  $15.95    Add To Cart Visitors to the mosque at Cordoba are plagued by the tricks of three naughty boys: Muslim Rashid, Jewish Samuel, and Christian Miguel. As punishment, the boys are forced to work in the mosque gardens, where they develop a deep sense of the building's beauty and significance. Jabberwocky Lewis Carroll   Kids Can Press  Hardcover  40 pp  $16.95    Add To Cart Jabberwocky is the first book in an exciting and unique new series from Kids Can Press that feature classic poems illustrated by outstanding contemporary artists. Whispering to Witches Anna Dale   Bloomsbury  Hardcover  304 pp  $16.95    Add To Cart Joe is on a train to visit his mother when he gets off at the wrong stop and his life takes a very unexpected turn. With the help of a bewitched broomstick, he is whisked to the home of the Dead-nettle Coven, where he befriends a young witch-in-training. Ester and Ruzya Masha Gessen   Dial Books   Hardcover  372 pp  $24.00    Add To Cart In this absorbing portrait, Gessen relates the experiences of her two grandmothers, both Russian Jews who survived the atrocities inflicted by Hitler and Stalin during World War II, showing how overwhelming events force people to search for the decent compromise. Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger Nigel Slater   Gotham  Hardcover  256 pp  $25.00    Add To Cart Toast is the story of a childhood remembered through food. In each chapter, as Nigel Slater takes us on a tour of the contents of his family's pantry - rice pudding, tinned ham, cream soda, mince pies, lemon drops, bourbon biscuits - we are transported. Outlet Randy Taguchi   Vertical  Softcover  272 pp  $15.95    Add To Cart A young Japanese finance writer tries to uncover the truth behind her older brother's mysterious death in Taguchi's bizarre, provocative and sometimes grisly debut novel, which was a bestseller in Japan. What We Owe Iraq Noah Feldman   Princeton  Hardcover  200 pp  $19.95    Add To Cart Noah Feldman argues that to prevent nation building from turning into a paternalistic, colonialist charade, we urgently need a new, humbler approach. Nation builders should focus on providing security, without arrogantly claiming any special expertise in how successful nation-states should be made. Monsieur Monde Vanishes Georges Simenon   New York Review of Books  Softcover  174 pp  $12.95    Add To Cart Monsieur Monde is a successful middle-aged businessman in Paris. One morning he walks out on his life, leaving his wife asleep in bed, leaving everything. Not long after, he surfaces on the Riviera, keeping company with drunks, whores and pimps, with thieves and their marks. A whole new world, where he feels surprisingly at home - at least for a while." Georges Simenon knew how obsession, buried for years, can come to life, and about the wreckage it leaves behind. He had a remarkable understanding of how bizarrely unaccountable people can be. And he had an almost uncanny ability to capture the look and feel of a given place and time. Monsieur Monde Vanishes is a subtle and profoundly disturbing triumph by the most popular of the twentieth century's great writers. Three Bedrooms in Manhattan Georges Simenon   New York Review of Books  Softcover  158 pp  $12.95    Add To Cart An actor, recently divorced, at loose ends in New York; a woman, no less lonely, perhaps even more desperate than the man: they meet by chance in an all-night diner and are drawn to each other on the spot. Roaming the city streets, hitting its late night dives, dropping another coin into yet another jukebox, these two lost souls struggle to understand what it is that has brought them, almost in spite of themselves, together. They are driven - from moment to moment, from bedroom to bedroom - to improvise the most unexpected of love stories, a tale of suspense where risk alone offers salvation. Dirty Snow Georges Simenon   New York Review of Books  Softcover  257 pp  $14.00    Add To Cart Nineteen-year-old Frank Friedmaier lives in a country under occupation. Most people struggle to get by; Frank takes it easy in his mother's whorehouse, which caters to members of the occupying forces. But Frank is restless. He is a pimp, a thug, a petty thief, and, as Dirty Snow opens, he has just killed his first man. Through the unrelenting darkness and cold of an endless winter, Frank will pursue abjection until at last there is nowhere to go. Persepolis 2 Marjane Satrapi   Knopf  Hardcover  176 pp  $17.95    Add To Cart The eagerly anticipated sequel to Marjane Satrapi's internationally acclaimed memoir-in-comic-strips. Funny and heartbreaking, edgy and searingly observant, Satrapi's tale about the life of an Iranian adolescent and about the life of her entire nation continues with the same dazzling combination of singular artistry, insight, and storytelling as her first book. Change Your Underwear Twice a Week Danny Gregory   Artisan  Softcover  224 pp  $18.95    Add To Cart With simple illustrations and quaint photographs, this is the first book to create a panorama of four decades of inadvertent humor embedded in earnest lessons on such topics as how to grow up healthy and strong, the mysteries of outer space and the "modern" world. Losing America Robert C. Byrd   W W Norton  Hardcover  128 pp  $23.95    Add To Cart The Senator argues that now is the time to regain the Constitution, to return to the values and processes that made America great, and to speak the truth to an increasingly aggressive and imperial White House. The Half Brother Lars Saabye Christensen   Arcade  Hardcover  696 pp  $27.00    Add To Cart The Half Brother is a truly gripping, epic novel, hugely ambitious in scope and utterly compelling, a wonderful mixture of surreal comedy and touching intimacy. In stunning detail and elegant prose it relates the lives of four generations of a far from ordinary family. It opens on May 8, 1945, when 20-year-old Vera, hoping to celebrate with her mother and grandmother the end of World War II, is brutally raped by an unknown assailant. From that crime is born a boy named Fred, a misfit who later becomes a boxer. Barnum, Vera's other son born several years later, and Fred form a bizarre but special relationship. Spanning 50 years, filled with a wonderful galaxy of finely etched characters, and structurally brilliant, The Half Brother has been both a literary sensation and a best-seller wherever it has been published. History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History Dana Lindaman   New Press  Hardcover  404 pp  $26.95    Add To Cart This intriguing compilation shows how very different US history looks when viewed from beyond American shores. In an alternative and eye-opening version of American history, History Lessons provides an enormous range of conflicting takes on seemingly straightforward events. Readers accustomed to a single view of American history will find British, Canadian, and Native American views of the War of 1812; Cuban and Russian views of the Bay of Pigs debacle; and Iranian views of the hostage crisis, among many other astonishing and enlightening examples. Natasha: And Other Stories David Bezmozgis   Farrar, Straus and Giroux  Hardcover  147 pp  $18.00    Add To Cart The stories in Natasha capture the immigrant experience with a serious wit as compelling as the work of Jhumpa Lahiri, Nathan Englander, or Adam Haslett. At the same time, their evocation of boyhood and youth, and the battle for selfhood in a passionately loving Jewish family, recalls the first published stories of Bernard Malamud, Harold Brodkey, Leonard Michaels, and Philip Roth. Deep Community: Adventures in the Modern Folk Underground Scott Alarik   Black Wolf Press  Softcover  416 pp  $19.95    Add To Cart The mainstream music industry is in historic decline, but the small substream world of folk music is thriving as never before. This book, written by renowned folk critic Scott Alarik, creates an intimate portrait of the modern folk world in interviews with over 120 of its biggest stars, and revealing backstage stories about this vibrant grassroots world. Amber Room: The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure Adrian Levy   Walker & Co  Hardcover  368pp  $26.00    Add To Cart This revelatory and startling book solves a 60-year mystery about the eighth wonder of the world--an ambitious and valuable work of art that was stolen by the Nazis from the palace in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1942. Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet: Women in Proverbs from around the World Mineke Schipper   Yale University Press  Hardcover  422pp  $40.00    Add To Cart Mineke Schipper analyzes similarities, differences, and contradictions in the cultural norms about gender expressed in proverbs she has found from over 150 countries. Grouping the sayings into such categories as the female body, love, sex, childbirth, and female power, she finds shared patterns in ideas about women (and how men see them). Part cross-cultural study, part literary criticism, and part anthology, her book is a unique and intriguing resource to dip into again and again. The Death of a Poet: The Last Days of Marina Tsvetaeva Irma Kudrova   Overlook Press  Hardcover  304pp  $29.95    Add To Cart The Death of a Poet is the harrowing narrative account of how the forces of history and fate combined to destroy the life of one of twentieth-century Russian literature's most talented and esteemed poets during the bloodiest period of Stalin's regime.     See Also   Haiku   Whitman   Dickinson   Ginsberg   Collins   Frost Selected Verse Federico Garcia Lorca   Farrar, Straus and Giroux  Softcover  405pp  $16.00    Add To Cart This new edition of Selected Verse incorporates changes made to Federico García Lorca's Collected Poems. In this bilingual edition, Lorca's poetic range comes clearly into view, from the playful Suites and stylized evocations of Andalusia to the utter gravity and mystery of the final elegies. See Also:  The Best Poems in the English Language - Harold Bloom Sepharad Antonio Munoz Molina   Harcourt  Hardcover  400pp  $27.00    Add To Cart From one of Spain's most celebrated writers, an extraordinary, inspired book that draws on the Sephardic diaspora, the Holocaust, and Stalin's purges to tell a twentieth-century story. Shifting seamlessly from the past to the present and following the routes of escape across countries and continents, Munoz Molina evokes people real and imagined who come together in a richly allusive pattern, all voices of separation, nostalgia, love, and endless waiting.     Facing the Lion Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton   National Geographic Society  Hardcover  127pp  $15.95    Add To Cart The author of this true story is a member of the Maasai tribe. The book follows his life as a member of this nomadic tribe. The descriptions of day-to-day life and cultural practices are quite vivid. It is a good introduction for those who know very little about the Maasai. Lekuton is sent to the missionary school because each family is required to send at least one of their children. He adapts to the education quite quickly and begins to learn Western ways, as well as gaining a new perspective on his own culture. It is interesting to read about his living style within two different cultural worlds. He describes how he acts and dresses in a certain way for his teachers, but returns to his traditional ways when he is at home. It is difficult to imagine how he handles such extreme transitions. The story follows Lekuton into adulthood and his journey to university in America.

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