Book Club

Home

Fiction
Mystery
Cooking
Biography
Children's Books
Travel
Home & Garden
The Arts
Health & Healing
Current Events
Science & Nature
History
The Classics

Your Shopping Cart

Bookstore Home


The Madonnas of Leningrad Debra Dean Harper Collins Softcover, 231pp $13.95 In the fall of 1941, the German army approached the outskirts of Leningrad, signaling the beginning of what would become a long and torturous siege. During the ensuing months, the city's inhabitants would brave starvation and the bitter cold, all while fending off the constant German onslaught. Marina, then a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum, along with other staff members, was instructed to take down the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping, yet leave the frames hanging empty on the walls - a symbol of the artworks' eventual return. To hold on to sanity when the Luftwaffe's bombs began to fall, she burned to memory, brushstroke by brushstroke, these exquisite artworks: the nude figures of women, the angels, the serene Madonnas that had so shortly before gazed down upon her. She used them to furnish a "memory palace," a personal Hermitage in her mind to which she retreated to escape terror, hunger, and encroaching death. A refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more." Moving back and forth in time between the Soviet Union and contemporary America, The Madonnas of Leningrad is a portrait of war and remembrance, of the power of love, memory, and art to offer beauty, grace, and hope in the face of overwhelming despair. u		Next Michael Crichton Harper Collins Hardcover, 448pp $27.95 The future is closer than you think. Get used to it. Devilishly clever, Next blends fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems, and a set of new possibilities can open at every turn. Next challenges our sense of reality and notions of morality. Balancing the comic and bizarre with the genuinely frightening and disturbing, Next shatters our assumptions, and reveals shocking new choices where we least expect.
Previous Selections
Dear John Nicholas Sparks Warner Books Hardcover, 288pp $24.99 From one of America's most beloved storytellers comes an unforgettable tale of a man who, in the name of love, must make the most difficult and heartrending decision of his life.. An extraordinary, moving story, DEAR JOHN explores the complexities of love -- how it survives time and heartbreak, and how it transforms us forever.		Hollywood Station Joseph Wambaugh Little Brown Sotcover, 352pp $24.99 The robbery of a Hollywood jewelry store, complete with masks and a hand grenade, quickly connects to a Russian nightclub, an undercover operation gone bloodily wrong, and a cluelessly ambitious pair of tweakers. Putting the pieces together are the sergeant they call the Oracle and his squad of street cops.
The Futurist James P. Othmer Doubleday Hardcover, 288pp $23.95 An absolutely original novel that is driven by equal parts corrosively funny satire, genuine physical fear, and heartfelt moral anguish. The Futurist manages to be wildly entertaining and deadly serious at the same time. Wry, picaresque, and a wicked barb aimed at all that is fatuous, The Futurist is the story of a pundit who finds his audience when he proclaims he knows nothing.		An Atomic Romance Bobbie Ann Mason Random House Sotcover, 288pp $13.95 Bestselling author Mason's first novel in over a decade is a profound, funny, and rollicking love story with an eccentric hero and a scientific/nuclear background.
Water for Elephants Sara Gruen Algonquin Books Hardcover, 352pp $23.95 Beautifully written, Water for Elephants is illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place. It tells a story of a love between two people that overcomes incredible odds in a world in which even love is a luxury that few can afford.		The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream Paulo Coelhoi Harper Collins Sotcover, 208pp $13.95 This story is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest.
The Namesake: A Novel Jhumpa Lahiri Houghton Mifflin Hardcover, 304pp $24.00 Lahiri brings to her terrifically poignant first novel the remarkable powers of emotion and insight that have drawn more than half a million readers to her debut story collection.		Motherless Brooklyn Dai Sijie Doubleday Softcover, 192pp $10.00 Lionel Essrog, who has Tourette's Syndrome, and three other veterans from St. Vincent's Home for Boys work for a small-time mobster. When the mobster is fatally stabbed, Lionel's world is turned topsy-turvy. A National Book Critics Circle Award Winner.
Crescent Diana Abu-Jaber W W Norton Hardcover, 352pp $24.95 Sirine works as a chef in a Lebanese restaurant, her passions aroused only by cooking - until an unbearably handsome Arabic literature professor starts dropping by for a little home cooking.		Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Dai Sijie Doubleday Softcover, 192pp $10.00 In 1971 Mao's campaign against the intellectuals is at its height. Our narrator and his best friend, Luo, have been sent to a remote mountain village to be 're-educated'. But the two seventeen-year-olds have a violin and their sense of humor to keep them going.
Three Junes Julia Glass Bantam Doubleday Softcover, 368pp $14.00 An astonishing first novel that traces the lives of a Scottish family over a decade as they confront the joys and longings, fulfillments and betrayals of love in all its guises.		The Dive from Clausen's Pier Ann Packer Vintage Softcover, 432pp $14.00 The Dive from Clausen’s Pier reminds us how precarious our lives are and how quickly they can be divided into before and after, whether by random accident or by the force of our own desires.