What People Magazine is Reading This Week (Jan 10th Issue)

For those Kindle readers who read for entertainment, checking out the book reviews in People magazine is good way to find new people-related books - celebrity bios, popular novels,and nonfiction - just hitting bookstore shelves. Featured in the January 10th issue of People:

Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses, by Claire Dederer. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. Print length: 352 p. MEMOIR. People magazine's slant: "...funny, well-observed and ultimately inspiring." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (10 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $13.83. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The studio was decorated in the style of 'Don’t Be Afraid, We’re Not a Cult.' All was white and blond and clean, as though the room had been designed for surgery, or Swedish people. The only spot of color came from the Tibetan prayer flags strung over the doorway into the studio. In flagrant defiance of my longtime policy of never entering a structure adorned with Tibetan prayer flags, I removed my shoes, paid my ten bucks, and walked in... Ten years ago, Claire Dederer threw her back out breastfeeding her baby daughter. Told to try yoga by everyone from the woman behind the counter at the co-op to the homeless guy on the corner, she signed up for her first class. She fell madly in love. Poser is unlike any other book about yoga you will read - because it is actually a book about life. Witty and heartfelt, sharp and irreverent..." - Amazon.

Being Polite to Hitler, by Robb Forman Dew. Little, Brown and Company, 2011. Print length: 304 p. NOVEL. People magazine's slant: "A winning, quietly lyrical account of a simpler time." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $11.99; Hardcover $13.86. Text-to-Speech: Enabled. This is the final book in a trilogy, following The Evidence Against Her (2001) and The Truth of the Matter (2005).
"After teaching and raising her family for most of her life, Agnes Scofield realizes that she is truly weary of the routine her life has become. But how, at 51, can she establish an identity apart from what has so long defined her? Often eloquent, sometimes blunt, and always full of fire, The Scofield clan is not a family that keeps its opinions to itself. As much as she'd like to, Agnes can no more deflect their adamant advice than she can step down as their matriarch. And despite her newfound freedom, Agnes finds herself becoming even more entangled in the family web. She shepherds her daughter-in-law, Lavinia, who moves in with her own two daughters to escape her husband's drinking. She puts out fires, smoothes fraying nerves, and, stunned as anyone, receives a marriage proposal. Having expected her life to become smaller, Agnes is amazed to see it grow instead. Robb Forman Dew intricately weaves together personal and family life into a richly wrought tapestry of the country in the 1950s and beyond." - Amazon.

Sea Change, by Jeremy Page. Viking, 2010. Print length: 288 p. NOVEL. People magazine's slant: "...reminds us that love can heal even the worst wounds." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $17.13. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Married musicians Guy and Judy live an apparently idyllic life in East Anglia with their four-year-old daughter, Freya. But within two months of Freya’s death in an accident, the marriage dissolves. Guy moves aboard a drafty old boat, and for five years, he obsessively creates a diary in which Freya is still alive and the family intact. In Guy’s words, he’s trying to 'write a future for her' and cope with the loss of everything he holds precious. On a voyage into the North Sea, he meets a woman and her daughter, who are also grieving, and he realizes that he might be able to build a new life... - Thomas Gaughan for Booklist.

Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It's Good for Everyone, by Richard Settersten & Barbara E. Ray. Bantam, 2010. Print length: 246 p. NONFICTION. Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99; Paperback $8.06. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Settersten, a professor of human development and family sciences at Oregon State University, and Ray, communications director of the Network on Transitions to Adulthood, funnel the findings of the eight-year MacArthur Research Network's study of 20-somethings into a portrait of a generation. Drawing on more than 500 interviews and foraying into their subjects' debts, regrets, and ambitions, the authors reveal that the cohort is making a slower transition to adulthood - they are slower to leave the nest, slower to find a full-time job, slower to marry and have children - but that their choices are hardly regressions; they are often necessary adaptations to a world vastly different from their parents'. Aside from enjoying a panoramic perspective on one generation, readers will be able to glean tips on everything from dating to parenting from this admirably lucid and fair-minded study that, in describing what is happening, reveals what is working." - Publishers Weekly.

Briefly Mentioned

How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, by Stanley Fish. Harper Collins, 2011. Print length: 160 p. NONFICTION. People magazine's slant: "He'll teach you the art." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $11.10. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"New York Times columnist and college professor Fish appreciates fine sentences the way some people appreciate fine wine. In 10 short chapters, Fish takes readers through a cogent analysis of how to craft a sentence. He talks about form, content, and style, always taking care to illustrate his points with an ample selection of judicously chosen quotations from virtuoso writers, from Milton and Shakepeare to Anton Scalia and Elmore Leonard. He then proceeds to drill down into the quotations, zeroing in on the tense, parts of speech, or precise phrasing that make the sentences sing. He also discusses famous first and last lines, always keeping in the forefront the extraordinary power of language to shape reality. And, befitting his subject matter, he does all this in the most luminous prose... - Joanne Wilkinson for Booklist.

How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond, by John Powell. Little, Brown and Company, 2010. Print length 272 p. NONFICTION. People magazine's slant: "...how perfect pitch is no big deal and why some songs make us cry." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (8 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99; Hardcover $16.49. Text-to-Speech: Enabled. Buyer beware alert for Kindle readers: The hardcover edition of this book includes a CD with examples and exercises.
"What makes a musical note different from any other sound? How can you tell if you have perfect pitch? Why do 10 violins sound only twice as loud as one? Do your Bob Dylan albums sound better on CD or vinyl? John Powell, a scientist and musician, answers these questions and many more in an intriguing and original guide to acoustics. In a clear, accessible, and engaging voice, Powell fascinates the reader with his delightful descriptions of the science and psychology lurking beneath the surface of music. With lively discussions of the secrets behind harmony, timbre, keys, chords, loudness, musical composition, and more..." - Amazon.

The Truth About Grief: The Myth of Its Five Stages and the New Science of Loss, by Ruth Davis Konigsberg. Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print length: 320 p. NONFICTION. People magazine's slant: "This hopeful book upends old ideas...emphasizes resilience." Amazon customer rating: none yet.Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $13.97. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"The five stages of grief are so deeply imbedded in our culture that no American can escape them. Every time we experience loss - a personal or national one - we hear them recited: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The stages are invoked to explain everything from how we will recover from the death of a loved one to a sudden environmental catastrophe or to the trading away of a basketball star. But the stunning fact is that there is no validity to the stages that were proposed by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross more than forty years ago. In The Truth About Grief, Ruth Davis Konigsberg shows how the five stages were based on no science but nonetheless became national myth. She explains that current research paints a completely different picture of how we actually grieve. It turns out people are pretty well programmed to get over loss. Grieving should not be a strictly regimented process, she argues; nor is the best remedy for pain always to examine it or express it at great length." - Amazon.


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Kindle Author du Jour: Bill Bryson

Among the many thousands of things that I have never been able to understand, one in particular stands out. That is the question of who was the first person who stood by a pile of sand and said, "You know, I bet if we took some of this and mixed it with a little potash and heated it, we could make a material that would be solid and yet transparent. We could call it glass." Call me obtuse, but you could stand me on a beach till the end of time and never would it occur to me to try to make it into windows. - Bill Bryson.

If you read for pleasure and yawn at the idea of the innumerable vampires and empty-eyed zombies that seem to largely populate what passes for leisure reading these days, perhaps you should consider diving into one of the many entertaining books by Bill Bryson. Bryson, originally from Des Moines, Iowa, is mostly an ex-pat these days, living in Great Britain when he's not traveling around the world investigating whatever strikes his fancy - from the outback of Australia to the intricacies of atomic theory or the composition of the core of the planet Earth. He writes on science, on language and literature, and on travel - all with a touch of humor that makes nonfiction go down smoothly. Bryson books available in Kindle editions include:

Memoir:

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir. Broadway, 2006. Print length: 288 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (360 reviews). Kindle edition $8.30. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"The Thunderbolt Kid was born in the 1950s when six-year-old Bryson found a mysterious, scratchy green sweater with a satiny thunderbolt across the chest. The jersey bestowed magic powers on the wearer–X-ray vision and the power to zap teachers and babysitters and deflect unwanted kisses from old people. These are the memoirs of that Kid, whose earthly parents were not really half bad - a loving mother who didn't cook and was pathologically forgetful, but shared her love of movies with her youngest child, and a dad who was the greatest baseball writer that ever lived and took his son to dugouts and into clubhouses where he met such famous players as Stan Musial and Willie Mays. Simpler times are conveyed with exaggerated humor; the author recalls the middle of the last century in the middle of the country (Des Moines, IA), when cigarettes were good for you, waxy candies were considered delicious, and kids were taught to read with Dick and Jane..." - Jackie Gropman for The School Library Journal.

Language and Literature:

Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words. Broadway, 2002. Print length: 256 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (27 reviews). Kindle edition $8.59. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"As usual Bill Bryson says it best: 'English is a dazzlingly idiosyncratic tongue, full of quirks and irregularities that often seem willfully at odds with logic and common sense. This is a language where cleave can mean to cut in half or to hold two halves together; where the simple word set has 126 different meanings as a verb, 58 as a noun, and 10 as a participial adjective; where if you can run fast you are moving swiftly, but if you are stuck fast you are not moving at all; [and] where colonel, freight, once, and ache are strikingly at odds with their spellings.' As a copy editor for the London Times in the early 1980s, Bill Bryson felt keenly the lack of an easy-to-consult, authoritative guide to avoiding the traps and snares in English, and so he brashly suggested to a publisher that he should write one. Surprisingly, the proposition was accepted, and for 'a sum of money carefully gauged not to cause embarrassment or feelings of overworth,' he proceeded to write that book–his first, inaugurating his stellar career. Now, a decade and a half later, revised, updated, and thoroughly (but not overly) Americanized, it has become Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words. - from the hardcover edition.

Shakespeare. HarperCollins, 2007. Print length: 208 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (109 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...In this addition to the Eminent Lives series, bestselling author Bryson...does what he does best: marshaling the usual little facts that others might overlook - for example, that in Shakespeare's day perhaps 40% of women were pregnant when they got married - to paint a portrait of the world in which the Bard lived and prospered. Bryson's curiosity serves him well, as he delves into subjects as diverse as the reliability of the extant images of Shakespeare, a brief history of the theater in England and the continuing debates about whether William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon really wrote Shakespeare's works. Bryson is a pleasant and funny guide to a subject at once overexposed and elusive..." - Publishers Weekly.

Science:

A Short History of Nearly Everything. Broadway, 2006. Print length: 560 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (839 reviews). Kindle edition $8.89. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, traveling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge..." - Amazon.

Travel:

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail. Broadway, 2010. Print length: 304 p. Amazon customer rating: Kindle edition $7.59. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Returning to the U.S. after 20 years in England, Iowa native Bryson decided to reconnect with his mother country by hiking the length of the 2100-mile Appalachian Trail. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance. Bryson...(carries himself in an irresistibly bewildered manner, accepting each new calamity with wonder and hilarity. He reviews the characters of the AT (as the trail is called), from a pack of incompetent Boy Scouts to a perpetually lost geezer named Chicken John. Most amusing is his cranky, crude and inestimable companion, Katz, a reformed substance abuser who once had single-handedly 'become, in effect, Iowa's drug culture.' The uneasy but always entertaining relationship between Bryson and Katz keeps their walk interesting, even during the flat stretches. Bryson completes the trail as planned, and he records the misadventure with insight and elegance. He is a popular author in Britain and his impeccably graceful and witty style deserves a large American audience as well." - Publishers Weekly.

I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away. Broadway, 2008. Print length: 304 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (250 reviews). Kindle edition $8.63. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Bryson is the author of the best-selling A Walk in the Woods (1998), about his hike along the long stretch of the Appalachian Trail. Before that, he lived in Britain for 20 years with his English wife and their four children, working there for the Sunday Times and other publications. After his return to his native U.S., he was asked to write a weekly column for the British Night & Day magazine about his adventures and observations as he underwent the process of repatriation. These columns, written over a two-year period (1996-98), are now gathered in book form. His subject matter is the idiosyncrasies of contemporary American life, and according to Bryson, speaking from the vantage point of having been away for a long time, we certainly have loads of peculiarities in our national 'personality.' This is humor writing at its sharpest, and his saving grace is that he does more laughing with us than at us. When he has problems with his computer and calls for help, he moans, 'This, you see, is why I don't call my computer help line very often. We haven't been talking four seconds and already I can feel a riptide of ignorance and shame pulling me out into the icy depths of Humiliation Bay.' Drug laws and the virtues of garbage disposal are only two of the many facets of American life that Bryson has fun with." - Brad Hooper for Booklist.

At Home: A Short History of Private Life. Doubleday, 2010. Print length: 512 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (137 reviews). Kindle edition $9.55. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Bryson...takes readers on a tour of his house, a rural English parsonage, and finds it crammed with 10,000 years of fascinating historical bric-a-brac. Each room becomes a starting point for a free-ranging discussion of rarely noticed but foundational aspects of social life. A visit to the kitchen prompts disquisitions on food adulteration and gluttony; a peek into the bedroom reveals nutty sex nostrums and the horrors of premodern surgery; in the study we find rats and locusts; a stop in the scullery illuminates the put-upon lives of servants. Bryson follows his inquisitiveness wherever it goes, from Darwinian evolution to the invention of the lawnmower, while savoring eccentric characters and untoward events (like Queen Elizabeth I's pilfering of a subject's silverware). There are many guilty pleasures, from Bryson's droll prose - 'What really turned the Victorians to bathing, however, was the realization that it could be gloriously punishing' - to the many tantalizing glimpses behind closed doors at aristocratic English country houses. In demonstrating how everything we take for granted, from comfortable furniture to smoke-free air, went from unimaginable luxury to humdrum routine, Bryson shows us how odd and improbable our own lives really are." - Publishers Weekly.

In a Sunburned Country. Broadway, 2008. Print length: 320 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (467 reviews). Kindle edition $8.63. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...this travel narrative from veteran wanderer Bryson...provides an appreciative, informative, and hilarious portrait of the land Down Under. And so once more to the wandering road, declares Bryson - which is music to the ears of his many deserving fans. This time it is Australia, a country tailor-made to surrender just the kind of amusing facts Bryson loves. It was here, after all, that the Prime Minister dove into the surf of Victoria one day and simply disappeared - the prime minister, mind you. There are more things here to kill you than anywhere else in the world: all of the ten most poisonous snakes, sharks and crocodiles in abundance, the paralytic tick, and venomous seashells that will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. A place harsh and hostile to life, staggeringly empty yet packed with stuff. Interesting stuff, ancient stuff, stuff not readily explained. And Bryson finds it everywhere: in the Aborigines (who evidently invented and mastered oceangoing craft 30,000 years before anyone else, then promptly forgot all about the sea), in the Outback (where men are men and sheep are nervous), in stories from the days of early European exploration (of such horrific proportions they can be appreciated only as farce), and in the numerous rural pubs (where Bryson learns the true meaning of a hangover)..." - Kirkus Reviews.

Links:

Bill Bryson's Official Website
Wikipedia Bio

The Kindle Reads Entertainment Weekly's Top Ten Books of 2010 (Nonfiction)

In a year-end double issue, Entertainment Weekly lists its picks for the ten best fiction and ten best nonfiction books of 2010. In the nonfiction category, nine of the ten nonfiction titles are available in Kindle editions, the lone holdout being the graphically-rich How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less. Nonfiction picks include:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. Crown, 2010. Print length: 368 p. EW's slant: "...quite simply, a tour de force..." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (407 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive - even thrive - in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution - and her cells' strange survival - left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story..." - Tom Nissley for Amazon.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson. Random House, 2010. Print length: 720 p. EW's slant: "...an indelible portrait of race, class, and politics in 20th-century America." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (100 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career." - Amazon.

The Emperor of All Maladies, by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Simon and Schuster, 2010. Print length: 592 p. EW's slant: "...brilliant, riveting history..." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (49 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...a magnificent, profoundly humane 'biography' of cancer - from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with - and perished from - for more than five thousand years. The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, [it] provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments..." - Amazon.

Autobiography of Mark Twain, by Mark Twain. Edited by Harriet E. Smith and other editors of The Mark Twain Project. University of California Press, 2010. Print length: 743 p. EW's slant: "...a sprawling wit-packed accumulation of memories and opinions." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (98 reviews). Kindle edition $9.79. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Mark Twain is his own greatest character in this brilliant self-portrait, the first of three volumes collected by the Mark Twain Project on the centenary of the author's death. It is published complete and unexpurgated for the first time. (Twain wanted his more scalding opinions suppressed until long after his death.) Eschewing chronology and organization, Twain simply meanders from observation to anecdote and between past and present. There are gorgeous reminiscences from his youth of landscapes, rural idylls, and Tom Sawyeresque japes; acid-etched profiles of friends and enemies, from his 'fiendish' Florentine landlady to the fatuous and 'grotesque' Rockefellers; a searing polemic on a 1906 American massacre of Filipino insurgents; a hilarious screed against a hapless editor who dared tweak his prose; and countless tales of the author's own bamboozlement, unto bankruptcy, by publishers, business partners, doctors, miscellaneous moochers; he was even outsmarted by a wild turkey. Laced with Twain's unique blend of humor and vitriol, the haphazard narrative is engrossing, hugely funny, and deeply revealing of its author's mind." - Publishers Weekly.

Just Kids, by Patti Smith. HarperCollins, 2010. Print length: 304 p. EW's slant: "...a dazzlingly evocative remembrance of a vanished era that rightfully earned her this year's National Book Award for nonfiction." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (111 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe weren't always famous, but they always thought they would be. They found each other, adrift but determined, on the streets of New York City in the late '60s and made a pact to keep each other afloat until they found their voices - or the world was ready to hear them. Lovers first and then friends as Mapplethorpe discovered he was gay, they divided their dimes between art supplies and Coney Island hot dogs. Mapplethorpe was quicker to find his metier, with a Polaroid and then a Hasselblad, but Smith was the first to fame, transformed, to her friend's delight, from a poet into a rock star. (Mapplethorpe soon became famous too - and notorious - before his death from AIDS in 1989.) Smith's memoir of their friendship, Just Kids, is tender and artful, open-eyed but surprisingly decorous..." - Tom Nissley for Amazon.

Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff. Publisher. Print length: 384 p. EW's slant: "...smart, sweeping prose, restores Cleopatra to her former glory." Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (78 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and - after his murder - three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age... Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way, Cleopatra's supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order." - Amazon.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, by Mary Roach. W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print length: 334 p. EW's slant: "...simultaneously informative and get-strange-looks-on-the-subway hilarious..." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (112 reviews).Kindle edition $9.34. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"With her wry humor and inextinguishable curiosity, Mary Roach has crafted her own quirky niche in the somewhat staid world of science writing, showing no fear (or shame) in the face of cadavers, ectoplasm, or sex. In Packing for Mars, Roach tackles the strange science of space travel, and the psychology, technology, and politics that go into sending a crew into orbit. Roach is unfailingly inquisitive (Why is it impolite for astronauts to float upside down during conversations? Just how smelly does a spacecraft get after a two week mission?), and she eagerly seeks out the stories that don't make it onto NASA's website- - from SPCA-certified space suits for chimps, to the trial-and-error approach to crafting menus during the space program's early years (when the chefs are former livestock veterinarians, taste isn't high on the priority list). Packing for Mars is a book for grownups who still secretly dream of being astronauts..." - Lynette Mong for Amazon.

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. HarperCollins, 2010. Print length: 464 p. EW's slant: "A must-read for anyone curious about the hows and whys of a cutthroat presidential campaign." Amazon customer rating: 3 12 stars (675 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In 2008, the presidential election became blockbuster entertainment. Everyone was watching as the race for the White House unfolded like something from the realm of fiction. The meteoric rise and historic triumph of Barack Obama. The shocking fall of the House of Clinton - and the improbable resurrection of Hillary as Obama's partner and America's face to the world. The mercurial performance of John McCain and the mesmerizing emergence of Sarah Palin. But despite the wall-to-wall media coverage of this spellbinding drama, remarkably little of the real story behind the headlines has yet been told... In Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, two of the country's leading political reporters, use their unrivaled access to pull back the curtain on the Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Palin campaigns... Based on hundreds of interviews with the people who lived the story... a reportorial tour de force that reads like a fast-paced novel. Character driven and dialogue rich, replete with extravagantly detailed scenes, this is the occasionally shocking, often hilarious, ultimately definitive account of the campaign of a lifetime." - Amazon.

The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean, by Susan Casey. Doubleday, 2010. Print length: 336 p. EW's slant: "...white-knuckle account...delivers a thrill so intense you may never get in a boat again." Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (105 reviews). Kindle edition $9.78. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Casey, O Magazine editor-in-chief, travels across the world and into the past to confront the largest waves the oceans have to offer. This dangerous water includes rogue waves south of Africa, storm-born giants near Hawaii, and the biggest wave ever recorded, a 1,740 foot-high wall of wave (taller than one and a third Empire State Buildings) that blasted the Alaska coastline in 1958. Casey follows big-wave surfers in their often suicidal attempts to tackle monsters made of H2O, and also interviews scientists exploring the danger that global warning will bring us more and larger waves. Casey writes compellingly of the threat and beauty of the ocean at its most dangerous... [and] ...smoothly translates the science of her subject into engaging prose." - Publishers Weekly.

The Kindle Reads Entertainment Weekly's Top Ten Books of 2010 (Fiction)

In a year-end double issue Entertainment Weekly has listed its picks for the ten best fiction and ten best nonfiction books of 2010. In the fiction category, nine of the ten are available in Kindle editions, the lone holdout being 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective, by Garry Trudeau.
Fiction picks include:

The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman. Dial Press, 2010. Print length: 288 p. EW's slant: "...alternately acute and poignant..." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (203 reviews). Kindle edition $8.10. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"Set against the gorgeous backdrop of Rome, Tom Rachman’s wry, vibrant debut follows the topsy-turvy private lives of the reporters, editors, and executives of an international English language newspaper as they struggle to keep it - and themselves - afloat. Fifty years and many changes have ensued since the paper was founded by an enigmatic millionaire, and now, amid the stained carpeting and dingy office furniture, the staff’s personal dramas seem far more important than the daily headlines. Kathleen, the imperious editor in chief, is smarting from a betrayal in her open marriage; Arthur, the lazy obituary writer, is transformed by a personal tragedy; Abby, the embattled financial officer, discovers that her job cuts and her love life are intertwined in a most unexpected way. Out in the field, a veteran Paris freelancer goes to desperate lengths for his next byline, while the new Cairo stringer is mercilessly manipulated by an outrageous war correspondent with an outsize ego. And in the shadows is the isolated young publisher who pays more attention to his prized basset hound, Schopenhauer, than to the fate of his family’s quirky newspaper." - Amazon.

The Lonely Polygamist, by Grady Udall. W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print length: 602 p. EW's slant: "Udall...packs more heart, more human, more tragedy, and ultimately more hope into this one rollicking novel than most writers should dare to hope for in an entire career." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (90 reviews). Kindle edition $9.43. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Golden Richards is a polygamist Mormon with four wives, 28 children, a struggling construction business, and a few secrets. He tells his wives that the brothel he's building in Nevada is actually a senior center, and, more importantly, keeps hidden his burning infatuation with a woman he sees near the job site. Golden, perpetually on edge, has become increasingly isolated from his massive family - given the size of his brood, his solitude is heartbreaking - since the death of one of his children. Meanwhile, his newest and youngest wife, Trish, is wondering if there is more to life than the polygamist lifestyle, and one of his sons, Rusty, after getting the shaft on his birthday, hatches a revenge plot that will have dire consequences. With their world falling apart, will the family find a way to stay together?" - Publishers Weekly.

Room, by Emma Donoghue. Little, Brown and Company, 2010. Print length: 336 p. EW's slant: "...graceful, coolly unsensationalized..." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (371 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work." - Amazon.

The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer. Knopf, 2010. Print length: 624 p. EW's slant: "...both epic and intimate." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (80 reviews). Kindle edition $9.43. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
A sweeping love story set against the background of Hitler-era France and Hungary, this novel has been compared to Dr. Zhivago. Andrew Ervin, in The New York Times Book Review called it "...a close look at the terrible ways that enormous historical events can affect individual lives... The strength of The Invisible Bridge lies in Orringer’s ability to make us care so deeply about the people of her all-too-real fictional world."

Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray. Faber & Faber, 2010. Print length: 672 p. EW's slant: "...the author's humor and inventiveness never flag...leaves you feeling hopeful and hungry for life..." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (44 reviews). Kindle edition $14.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Why Skippy dies and what happens next is the subject of this dazzling and uproarious novel, unraveling a mystery that links the boys of Seabrook College to their parents and teachers in ways nobody could have imagined. With a cast of characters that ranges from hip-hop-loving fourteen-year-old Eoin 'MC Sexecutioner' Flynn to basketball playing midget Philip Kilfether, packed with questions and answers on everything from Ritalin, to M-theory, to bungee jumping, to the hidden meaning of the poetry of Robert Frost, Skippy Dies is a heartfelt, hilarious portrait of the pain, joy, and occasional beauty of adolescence, and a tragic depiction of a world always happy to sacrifice its weakest members." - Amazon.

One Day, by David Nicholls. Vintage, 2010. Print length: 448 p. EW's slant: "...luscious, beautiful and ultimately devastating portrait of two soul mates." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (192 reviews). Kindle edition $6.39. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"It's 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. They both know that the next day, after college graduation, they must go their separate ways. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. As the years go by, Dex and Em begin to lead separate lives - lives very different from the people they once dreamed they'd become. And yet, unable to let go of that special something that grabbed onto them that first night, an extraordinary relationship develops between the two. Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship are revealed on the same day - July 15th - of each year. Dex and Em face squabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. And as the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed, they must come to grips with the nature of love and life itself." - Amazon.

Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010. Print length: 592 p. EW's slant: "...a punch in the gut that transcends time." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (367 reviews). Kindle edition $9.18. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
Thirty years in the writing, Matterhorn tells the story of a platoon - led by rookie Lieutenant Waino Mellas - ordered to take an isolated hilltop near the Laotian border. Marlantes is himself a decorated Vietnam veteran who speaks with the voice of someone who has been there and many critics praised this book as the best novel to come out of the Vietnam conflict.

Rich Boy, by Sharon Pomerantz. Twelve, 2010. Print length: 528 p. EW's slant: "...a gripping narrative that doubles as a sweeping rumination on the American class system." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (36 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Pomerantz's compelling, finely crafted debut novel chronicles one man's journey from the blue-collar suburbs of 1950s Philadelphia to the high-society of 1980s New York. Robert Vishniak grows up in a working-class Jewish neighborhood, often at odds with his frugal, distant mother. Blessed with good looks and possessing an uncompromising ambition, Robert learns at an early age to use his physical appearance to his advantage. Eager to leave behind his humble upbringing, Robert is accepted to Tufts University, where he quickly falls in with a group of privileged students led by the enigmatic Tracey... Moving forward in time, Pomerantz chronicles Robert's varied adventures as he copes with the panoramic complexities and rewards of rebellion, self-renewal, and heartache. Over the course of four decades, Robert becomes entrenched in the upper echelon of Manhattan's elite, ultimately succeeding as a real-estate lawyer and marrying into a family of old money. He is finally enjoying the success he so desired as a young man, until a random encounter with a woman from his hometown begins to erode Robert's carefully crafted persona... - Leah Strauss for Booklist.

The Surrendered, by Chang-Rae Lee. Riverhead, 2010. Print length: 480 p. EW's slant: "...epic study of war wounds...Lee writes with exquisite tenderness..." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (52 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The odyssey of a Korean War refugee becomes first the subject of, then a haunting overture to, the award-winning Korean-American author's fourth novel... In a patiently developed and intermittently slowly paced narrative that covers a 30-year span and whose events occur in four countries and on three continents, the entangled histories of three protagonists are revealed. We first encounter 11-year-old June Han, traveling with her twin siblings following the deaths of their parents toward safety with their uncle's family. June's willed stoicism and suppression of fear serve her well in extremity, but they will have a far different effect on her later life - shaped when she is rescued by American G.I. Hector Brennan (himself in flight from the memory of a painful loss). Hector brings June to Sylvie Tanner, a minister's wife who runs an orphanage (and whose own demons owe much to the savagery of history in another place and another time). Each character's past, motivations and future prospects are rigorously and compassionately examined, as the author follows them after the war. In its ineffably quiet way, there really is something Tolstoyan in this searching fiction's determination to understand the characters specifically as members of families and products of other people's influences. - Kirkus Reviews.


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Books They're Talking About: Kindle Books in the Media (22 Dec 2010)

Media interviews are a popular way for writers to introduce new books they hope will catch the viewer's eye and generate interest in their work. Here's a selection of forthcoming Kindle books by authors scheduled for interviews on TV and radio programs. Books are arranged in chronological order by the date of the scheduled interview.

On NPR's Diane Rehm Show (20 Dec 2010):

Revelation of the Magi: The Lost Tale of the Wise Men's Journey to Bethlehem, by Brent Landau. HarperCollins, 2010. Print Length: 160 p. Kindle edition $10.99; Hardcover $15.63. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Each Christmas, adults and children alike delight at the story of the kings from the East who followed the star to Bethlehem to offer gifts to the newborn Christ. While this familiar tale is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, another little-known version later emerged that claimed to be the eyewitness account of the wise men. This ancient manuscript has lain hidden for centuries in the vaults of the Vatican Library, but through the determined persistence of a young scholar, Brent Landau, this astonishing discovery has been translated into English for the very first time. Everything we know about the wise men is based on only a few verses from the Bible. With the Revelation of the Magi, we can now read the story from the Magi's perspective. Readers will learn of the Magi's prophecies of God's incarnation from the beginning of time, their startling visitation in the form of a star, the teachings they receive from the baby Jesus, and the wise mens' joyous return to their homeland to spread the good news. Brent Landau received his Th.D. from Harvard University and is an expert in ancient biblical languages and literature." - Amazon.

On NBC's Today Show (20 Dec 2010):

William and Kate, by Christopher Andersen. Simon and Schuster, 2010. Print Length: 320 p. Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $13.83. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Theirs was destined from the start to be one of the most celebrated unions of the twenty-first century: he, the charismatic prince who would someday be crowned king of England; she, the stunningly beautiful commoner who won his heart. Prince William and Kate Middleton defied all odds to forge a storybook romance amid the scandals, power struggles, tragedies, and general dysfunction that are the hallmarks of Britain’s Royal Family. In the process, they became the most written about, gossiped about, admired, and envied young couple of their generation. Yet for most of their nearly decade-long affair, William and Kate have remained famously quiet and kept their royal relationship a tantalizing mystery. Now, as their long-anticipated wedding finally approaches, journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author Christopher Andersen reveals the intimate details of their celebrated courtship and offers a mesmerizing glimpse of the man and wife - and future king and queen - they will become." - Amazon.
An alert for Kindle readers: Much of the appeal of this book lies in the photographs so, if illustrations are important to you, you may prefer the hardcover edition.

On NPR's Morning Edition (20 Dec 2010):

Robert Morris: Financier of The American Revolution, by Charles Rappleye. Simon & Schuster, 2010. Print Length: 416 p. Kindle edition $14.99; Hardcover $19.80. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"The first full-length modern biography of an extraordinary, forgotten founder of the American republic, Rappleye's book, the best ever about its subject, is an effective work of rehabilitation. Morris (1734–1806) - a gifted, enterprising, and skilled merchant, banker, and political figure in Philadelphia - was key to the financing of the American Revolution and American government into the 1790s. But because he had many political and business enemies, was a rich Federalist elitist, and ended in debtors' prison for overspeculation in land, he has always remained in the shadows. So has the fact that while deeply committed to the American cause, like many others of his time, he mixed public service with an eye on gain...Nothing of the financier's full life (his privateering for the war effort; his pioneering trade with China; the 'overconfidence' that brought his downfall) escapes Rappleye, and his judgments are balanced and astute..." - Publishers Weekly.

On NPR's Morning Edition (20 Dec 2010):

Wishful Drinking, by Carrie Fisher. Simon & Schuster, 2008. Print Length: 163 p. Kindle edition $10.99; Paperback $11.19. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Finally, after four hit novels, Carrie Fisher comes clean (well, sort of ) with the crazy truth that is her life in her first-ever memoir. In Wishful Drinking, adapted from her one-woman stage show, Fisher reveals what it was really like to grow up a product of 'Hollywood in-breeding,' come of age on the set of a little movie called Star Wars, and become a cultural icon and bestselling action figure at the age of nineteen. Intimate, hilarious, and sobering, Wishful Drinking is Fisher, looking at her life as she best remembers it (what do you expect after electroshock therapy?). It's an incredible tale: the child of Hollywood royalty - Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher - homewrecked by Elizabeth Taylor, marrying (then divorcing, then dating) Paul Simon, having her likeness merchandized on everything from Princess Leia shampoo to PEZ dispensers, learning the father of her daughter forgot to tell her he was gay, and ultimately waking up one morning and finding a friend dead beside her in bed..." - Amazon.

On the Fox Glenn Beck Show (21 Dec 2010)

Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, by Stanley Kurtz. Simon and Schuster, 2010. Print Length: 496 p. Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $17.82. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In his controversial new book, veteran journalist Stanley Kurtz culls together two years of investigations from archives and never-before-tapped sources to present an exhaustively-researched exposé of President Obama’s biggest secret - the socialist convictions and tactical ruthlessness he has long swept under the rug. Kurtz makes an in-depth exploration of the president’s connections to radical groups such as ACORN, UNO of Chicago, the Midwest Academy, and the Socialist Scholars Conferences. He explains what modern 'stealth' socialism is, how it has changed, and how it continues to influence the Democratic Party. He sheds light on what the New York Times called a 'lost chapter' of the president’s life - his years at Columbia - and proves that Obama’s youthful infatuation with socialism was not just a phase." - publisher.
Kurtz is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, as well as a contributing editor for National Review Online.

On MSNBC's Morning Joe (21 Dec 2010):

Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff. Little, Brown and Company, 2010. Print Length: 384 p. Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $15.74. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and - after his murder - three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age... Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way, Cleopatra's supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order." - Amazon.

On CSPAN2's BookTV

A Secret Gift: How One Man's Kindness - and a Trove of Letters - Revealed the Hidden History of the Great Depression, by Ted Gup. The Penguin Press, 2010. Print Length: 368 p. Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $14.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Shortly before Christmas 1933 in Depression-scarred Canton, Ohio, a small newspaper ad offered $10, no strings attached, to 75 families in distress. Interested readers were asked to submit letters describing their hardships to a benefactor calling himself Mr. B. Virdot. The author's grandfather Sam Stone was inspired to place this ad and assist his fellow Cantonians as they prepared for the cruelest Christmas most of them would ever witness. Moved by the tales of suffering and expressions of hope contained in the letters, which he discovered in a suitcase 75 years later, Ted Gup initially set out to unveil the lives behind them, searching for records and relatives all over the country who could help him flesh out the family sagas hinted at in those letters. From these sources, Gup has re-created the impact that Mr B. Virdot's gift had on each family. Many people yearned for bread, coal, or other necessities, but many others received money from B. Virdot for more fanciful items - a toy horse, say, or a set of encyclopedias. As Gup's investigations revealed, all these things had the power to turn people's lives around - even to save them. But as he uncovered the suffering and triumphs of dozens of strangers, Gup also learned that Sam Stone was far more complex than the lovable-retiree persona he'd always shown his grandson..." - Amazon.

Kindle Genre Watch: New in Romance & Western Fiction

Spend less time searching for new fiction and more time reading it as I watch for newly-released genre fiction in the Kindle Store so you don't have to. Recent genre fiction releases in romance and western fiction include:

Romance

A Countess by Christmas by Annie Burrows. Harlequin Historical, 2010. Print length: 288 p. Kindle edition $3.89. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"The Earl of Bridgemere is happy to encourage his reputation as a curmudgeonly recluse if it repels the grasping females who usually attend his lavish Christmas parties. Helen Forrest is like a breath of fresh air, uninterested in his wealth and not cowed by his temper. Bridgemere's seasonal duty suddenly becomes a pleasure as he sets about making Helen his countess - by Christmas!" - Amazon.

The Hating Game by Talli Roland. Prospera Publishing, 2010. Print length: 352 p. Kindle edition $2.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"When man-eater Mattie Johns agrees to star on a dating game show to save her ailing recruitment business, she's confident she'll sail through to the end without letting down the permaguard she's perfected from years of her love 'em and leave 'em dating strategy. After all, what can go wrong with dating a few losers and hanging out long enough to pick up a juicy £200,000 prize? Plenty, Mattie discovers, when it's revealed that the contestants are four of her very unhappy exes." - Amazon.

Marry Me by Jo Goodman. Zebra Books, 2010. Print length: 384 p. Kindle edition $3.80. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The delightful denizens of Reidsville, Colorado, last seen in Goodman’s Never Love A Lawman (2009), are back, more feisty and charming than ever. Added to the frontier town’s mix of eclectic characters are Doctor Coleridge Monroe and his teenage sister Whitley. Cole, visiting the outlying population with deputy Will Beatty, gingerly approaches the cabin of local curmudgeon Judah Abbot, who lives with his remaining son, Ryan, nicknamed Runt. As Cole introduces himself to Judah, Will discovers that Runt is bleeding. Cole not only realizes that the person known as a young man to others is really a woman but also that she is miscarrying. So begins a tale of deceit and malice leavened by the healing power of love..." - Pat Henshaw for Booklist.

Heir by Grace Burrowes. Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2010. Print length: 480 p. Kindle edition $2.39. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The earl of Westhaven is determined to avoid his father's marital machinations by remaining in sweltering London while Society departs for the country. Westhaven takes great pleasure in his well-run household until his new housekeeper, Anna Seaton, mistakes his intentions toward a chambermaid and knocks him flat with a fireplace poker. Anna is too educated and polished to have been born to service, but she makes a tender nurse. As their affections grow, Westhaven believes he's found a candidate for marriage who would please him and satisfy his father, but Anna refuses Westhaven's proposal. Her hidden background contains ugly obligations, and she's determined to keep outrunning them even as he tries to change her mind. Burrowes turns familiar tropes into a refreshing and captivating love story..." - Publishers Weekly.

His Conquest by Diana J. Cosby. Zebra Books, 2010. Print length: 356 p. Kindle edition $3.02. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Linet Dancort will not be sold. But that's essentially what her brother intends to do - to trade her like so much chattel to widen his already vast scope of influence. Linet will seize any opportunity to escape her fate - and opportunity comes in the form of a rebel prisoner locked in her brother's dungeon, predatory and fearsome, and sentenced to hang in the morning. Seathan MacGruder, Earl of Grey, is not unused to cheating death. But even this legendary Scottish warrior is surprised when a beautiful Englishwoman creeps to his cell and offers him his freedom. What Linet wants in exchange, though - safe passage to the Highlands - is a steep price to pay. For the only thing more dangerous than the journey through embattled Scotland is the desire that smolders between these two fugitives the first time they touch..." - Amazon.

Pleasures of a Notorious Gentleman by Lorraine Heath. Harper Collins, 2010. Print length: 384 p. Kindle edition $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"As the black sheep second son of an Earl, Stephen Lyons has gained a reputation in the art of seduction, but when his wicked ways result in scandal, he joins the army to redeem himself. On the battlefield, he proves courageous...until he is seriously wounded. Returning home to recover, he discovers he can't remember the angelic beauty who arrives at his doorstep, his babe nestled in her arms. Mercy Dawson will risk everything to protect the son of the dashing soldier she once knew and admired. When Stephen offers to do the honorable thing, she is determined that London's most notorious gentleman will desire her and no other. But Mercy fears that what began as an innocent deception could destroy her dreams and their blossoming love if Stephen ever learns the scandalous truth..." - Publisher.

Westerns

Galveston: A Novel of the Far Western Civil War by P. G. Nagle. Evennight Books, 2010. Print length: 384 p. Kindle edition $2.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled. First published in 2002 and newly available for the Kindle.

"The Battle of Valverde is over, and Jamie Russell, now a Confederate war hero, returns home to his family. Jamie's sister Emma has been shattered by the death of her true love at Valverde. Worried about their daughter, Jamie's parents convince him to escort Emma to Galveston. Emma will have a chance to escape her monotonous life on the ranch, become a lady, and perhaps leave the memory of death behind her. Jamie soon discovers that Galveston lacks the defenses it needs to ward off a Union naval attack. Troubled by leaving his sister and aunt in a place susceptible to Union takeover, Jamie returns to his unit and begs Confederate officers to have Galveston's defenses strengthened. His pleas fall on deaf ears. Union warships arrive in Galveston Bay, taking it for the Federals and confirming Jamie's worst fears. Now Jamie must travel back to Galveston in a secret Confederate operation to reclaim the city and rescue his family." - Publisher.

Shootout of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone. Pinnacle Books, 2010. Print length: 352 p. Kindle edition $4.30. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"They're hanging Billy Ray Cabot in Cloverdale, Nevada on Friday. Or so they think. Thursday brings Smoke Jensen to town. In another life, Billy Ray was almost kin to Smoke, and guilty or not, Smoke will blast Cloverdale sky high if that's what it takes to set his old friend free. By midnight, Smoke and Billy Ray are riding hell-for-leather out of Cloverdale, and into a war between cunning railroad robbers and the organization sworn to stop them. Billy Ray was working for the railroads until he was betrayed. Now, both men are pursued by deadly enemies on either side of the law...." - Publisher.

The Bridge at Valentine by Renee Thompson. Tres Picos Press, 2010. Print Length: 240 p. Kindle edition $8.00. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Thompson’s debut recasts the Montagues and the Capulets as ranchers in 1890s Idaho in a western variation on Romeo and Juliet. After July, the daughter of rough-hewn sheep-farmer Isaac Caldwell, is wounded in a bridge collapse, Isaac blames his chief rival, cattleman Silas Morrow, for sabotaging the bridge. This suspicion doesn’t deter teenage July from falling hard for Silas’ son, thoughtful Rory, who dreams of being a photographer... Vividly evoking the mountain ranches and small towns of rural Idaho, a newly minted state when the novel takes place, Thompson’s first novel offers a fresh spin on a familiar tale." - Kristine Huntley for Booklist.

Shalom on the Range by Michael Katz. Fast Karma/Strider Nolan Media, 2010. Print length: 312 p. Kindle edition $5.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"David Goldstein is a young man from an affluent Philadelphia family. As a detective for the Kansas-Pacific Railroad, he has demonstrated his mental acuity as well as his ability to handle himself in a physical confrontation. In September of 1870, David is assigned to investigate a train robbery near Denver, Colorado. For the first time in his life he travels to the mythical 'Wild West' he has only read about in dime novels. Understandably out of his element, he hires local bounty hunters to help him track the vicious band of outlaws. His companions include Red Parker, the moody ex-Union soldier; Jake Becket, the equal-opportunity bigot with the roguish good looks; and Harvey White Crow, the taciturn Ute Indian whose silent demeanor conceals a piercing intelligence. Along the way they meet a mysterious woman named Elizabeth..." - Publisher.


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A Week of Entertainment: Kindle Books Reviewed in Entertainment Weekly's 17 Dec 2010 Issue

Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the December 17th issue include:

The Radleys, by Matt Haig. Free Press, 2010. Print length: 384 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...effortlessly sleek and witty, with clever references to past pop culture vampires like Miles Davis, Lord Byron, and Friedrich Nietzsche." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99; Hardcover $16.50. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"The Radleys - Peter, Helen, and their two teenagers, Clara and Rowan - live outwardly in domestic bliss, but it comes at a price: Peter and Helen are abstainers, vampires who view blood drinking as an addiction, and keeping up the facade has strained their marriage. They’ve kept the truth from their children, but this backfires when Clara’s vegan diet (dangerous for abstainers, who need meat) causes uncontrollable blood lust, culminating in her ripping a boy to shreds. Enter Uncle Will, an unrepentant vampire, whose subtle and dangerous charm brings even more trouble. This is a dark domestic drama about a loving but dysfunctional family that just happens to be vampires... Haig’s sly digs at suburbia’s forced banality and conformity are on target. As Rowan says, 'Everyone represses everything...We’re middle-class and we’re British. Repression is in our veins.' - Krista Hutley for Booklist.

Briefly Mentioned:

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton. Atria, 2010. Print length: 480 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "Morton, as usual, deftly mixed all the necessary ingredients for a top-notch romantic thriller." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (45 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $15.60. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"A letter posted in 1941 finally reaches its destination in 1992 with powerful repercussions for Edie Burchill, a London book editor, in this enthralling romantic thriller from Australian author Morton (The Forgotten Garden). At crumbling Milderhurst Castle live elderly twins Persephone and Seraphina and their younger half-sister, Juniper, the three eccentric spinster daughters of the late Raymond Blythe, author of The True History of the Mud Man, a children's classic Edie adores. Juniper addressed the letter to Meredith, Edie's mother, then a young teen evacuated to Milderhurst during the Blitz. Edie, who's later invited to write an introduction to a reprint of Raymond's masterpiece, visits the seedily alluring castle in search of answers. Why was her mother so shattered by the contents of a letter sent 51 years earlier? And what happened to soldier Thomas Cavill, Juniper's long-missing fiancé and Meredith's former teacher? ...the answers will stun readers." - Publishers Weekly.

Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books, by William Kuhn. Nan A. Talese, 2010. Print length: 368 p. BIOGRAPHY. EW's slant: "...a sideways peek into Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' life...examining the books she edited during her years at Viking and Doubleday..." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $13.97; Hardcover $15.19. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis never wrote a memoir, but she told her life story and revealed herself in intimate ways through the nearly 100 books she brought into print during the last two decades of her life as an editor at Viking and Doubleday. Based on archives and interviews with Jackie's authors, colleagues, and friends, Reading Jackie mines this significant period of her life to reveal both the serious and the mischievous woman underneath the glamorous public image. Many Americans regarded Jackie as the paragon of grace, but few knew her as the woman sitting on her office floor laying out illustrations, or flying to California to persuade Michael Jackson to write his autobiography. Reading Jackie provides a compelling behind-the-scenes look at Jackie at work: how she commissioned books and nurtured authors, as well as how she helped to shape stories that spoke to her strongly. Jackie is remembered today for her marriages to JFK and to Aristotle Onassis, but her real legacy is the books that reveal the tastes, recollections, and passions of an independent woman." - Amazon.

Selected Stories, by William Trevor. Viking, 2010. Print length: 576 p. SHORT STORIES. EW's slant: "Trevor, who has been called 'the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language,' here collects 48 of his most memorable..." Amazon customer rating: 3 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $16.99; Hardcover $20.47. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Trevor’s four most recent short story collections...merge all their pages into this deep reservoir into which avid fiction readers will dip repeatedly... In this master storyteller’s hands, rural Ireland becomes the cosmos in which every one of us feels at home. The unfortunate ending of a friendship, the pain of a wife’s discovery of her husband’s affair, a husband’s sacrifice of his affair so his mistress won’t be regarded as just someone’s 'bit on the side' - these specific situations assemble under the book’s umbrella theme of ordinary life as undulating waves of pleasures and crises." - Brad Hooper for Booklist.

Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, by Jennifer Homans. Random House, 2010. Print length: 672 p. NONFICTION. EW's slant: "...brings a dancer's grace and sure-footed agility to the page." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (6 reviews). Kindle edition $18.90; Hardcover $21.00. Text-to-Speech: Disabled. A note to Kindle readers: this volume is lavishly illustrated so you might want to consider the hardcover edition if illustrations are important to you.
"For more than four hundred years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. A ballerina dancing The Sleeping Beauty today is a link in a long chain of dancers stretching back to sixteenth-century Italy and France: Her graceful movements recall a lost world of courts, kings, and aristocracy, but her steps and gestures are also marked by the dramatic changes in dance and culture that followed. Ballet has been shaped by the Renaissance and Classicism, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Bolshevism, Modernism, and the Cold War. Jennifer Homans is a historian and critic who was also a professional dancer... She traces the evolution of technique, choreography, and performance in clean, clear prose, drawing readers into the intricacies of the art with vivid descriptions of dances and the artists who made them." - Amazon.

Christmas Can Be Deadly: Holiday Mysteries for the Kindle

During this holiday season, as you relax with your Kindle in front of a roaring fireplace or perhaps on a beach in Tahiti (we can dream, can't we?), what better diversion than a cozy mystery story?

A Holiday Yarn: A Seaside Knitters Mystery by Sally Goldenbaum. NAL, 2010. Print length: 272 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $10.99; Hardcover $16.29. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Death puts a damper on the Christmas festivities in Goldenbaum's engrossing fourth cozy featuring Izzy Chambers and the other members of her Sea Harbor, Mass., knitting circle (after April 2010's Moon Spinners). When 'controversial fashion editor' Pamela Pisano turns up dead with a pistol in her hand on the snow-covered back porch of the Pisano family estate, Ravenswood-by-the-Sea, it appears a clear case of suicide. Particularly distraught is Mary Pisano, Pamela's cousin, who recently inherited Ravenswood and is in the process of converting the house into a bed-and-breakfast. When a painter Mary hired falls to his death off a ladder onto some granite rocks, this accident is more than a little suspicious. Of course, a killer is at work, and the knitters must tap old memories and old police records before they can bring the mystery to its unexpected conclusion." - Publishers Weekly.

Kissing Christmas Goodbye by M. C. Beaton. An Agatha Raisin mystery. Minotaur Books, 2007. Print length: 250 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (29 reviews). Kindle edition $2.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Agatha Raisin is bored. Her detective agency in the Cotswolds is thriving, but she’ll scream if she has to deal with another missing cat or dog. Only two things seem to offer potential excitement: the upcoming Christmas festivities and her ex, James Lacey. This year she is sure that if she invites James to a really splendid, old-fashioned Christmas dinner, their love will rekindle like a warm Yule log. When a wealthy widow hires Agatha because she’s convinced a member of her family is trying to kill her, Agatha is intrigued - especially when the widow drops dead after high tea at the manor house. Who in this rather sterile house, complete with fake family portraits, could have hated the old lady enough to poison her?" - Amazon.

Chanukah Guilt by Ilene Schneider. Swimming Kangaroo Books, 2007. Print length: 324 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (13 reviews). Kindle edition $3.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Rabbi Aviva Cohen is a 50-something, twice-divorced rabbi living a rather uneventful life in South Jersey. True, she has a family that is rather unconventional. And her first ex-husband is moving to her town. But her life takes a truly interesting - and sinister - turn when she agrees to officiate at the funeral of an unpopular land developer. She doesn't expect to be told by two different people that he had been murdered. Nor does she expect that the first funeral will result in a suicide. Her search for the story behind the suicide (or was it murder?) will lead her to discover the truism - appearances can be deceiving - is accurate, while putting her life in jeopardy." - Amazon.

Midnight Clear by Kathy Hogan Trocheck. Harper Collins, 2008. Print length: 400 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (18 reviews). Kindle edition $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Ex-Atlanta cop-turned-house-cleaning entrepreneur Callahan Garrity doesn't know what she is getting for Christmas, but she never expects the gift that arrives at her door: her estranged, ne'er-do-well brother, Brian, and his adorable three-year-old daughter, Maura. A rebel who's been in and out of trouble most of his life, Brian's deep in it now since he illegally abducted Maura from under the nose of his shrewish former wife. When the beautiful child's mother is found murdered, the police come looking for Brian. And now, to save her brother and her holiday, Callahan - along with her irascible mom, Edna, and a gaggle of House Mouse employees - must uncover the truth and a killer, even if it means digging around the roots of her own family tree and exposing the rot underneath." - Amazon.

The Queene's Christmas: An Elizabeth I Mystery by Karen Harper. Minotaur Books, 2010. Print length: 320 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (8 reviews). Kindle edition $2.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"It is the Christmas season of 1564, and Elizabeth wants her subjects to enjoy the holidays while she attempts to outwit her devious Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, who is plotting to steal the throne of England. Elizabeth has planned an elaborate holiday feast, but the preparations go awry when Master Hodge Thatcher, Dresser of the Queene's Privy Kitchen, is found hanging in his workroom adorned with the peacock feathers meant for decorating the roasted bird. Elizabeth must solve the crime before she becomes another victim. The wonderful historical detail mixed with intrigue and authentic Elizabethan recipes enliven this story, which is a real treat for those who enjoy historical mysteries." - Barbara Bibel for Booklist.

Cat Desk the Halls by Shirley Rousseau Murphy. Harper Collins, 2007. Print length: 352 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (17 reviews). Kindle edition $6.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The charming seaside village of Molena Point, California, leads one to expect a quiet traditional Christmas surrounded by family and friends - but not this holiday season. Instead of singing carols and climbing into Christmas trees, Joe Grey, feline P.I., is faced with his most difficult case yet—and that's saying a lot for a wily tomcat who for years has been solving crimes the police can't even crack. At midnight in the deserted gardens of the shopping plaza, a stranger lies dead beneath the village Christmas tree; the only witness to the shooting is a little child. But when the police arrive, summoned by an anonymous phone call of feline origin, both the body and the child have disappeared. As police scramble for leads, the grey tomcat, his tabby lady, and their tortoiseshell pal, Kit, launch their own unique investigation..." - Amazon.

Six Geese A-Slaying by Donna Andrews. Minotaur Books, 2010. Print length: 336 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (17 reviews). Kindle edition $2.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled. This is the tenth book in Andrews' Meg Langslow comic mystery series.
"Meg Langslow is having a tough enough time trying to organize the Christmas parade, with its Twelve Days of Christmas theme, in Caerphilly, Va. Then someone drives a stake through the heart of Santa, played by grouchy Ralph Doleson, who hates children and animals (and no, he's not a vampire). Finding the killer who could totally spoil Christmas becomes number one priority for perky amateur sleuth Meg. Suspects include protesting members of SPOOR (Stop Poisoning Our Owls and Raptors), six of whose members are playing geese in the parade, a local woman whom Doleson may have been blackmailing and a nosy Washington Tribune reporter..." Publishers Weekly.

Merry, Merry Ghost by Carolyn Hart. Harper Collins, 2009. Print length: 288 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (63 reviews). Kindle edition $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Being dead can't put a damper on spirited, holiday-loving Bailey Ruth Raeburn. Christmas is a time for family and giving, and a wealthy woman in Adelaide, Oklahoma, is about to embrace both. Discovering that she has a young grandson, the dowager decides to change her will to leave the bulk of her fortune to the young boy - an alteration that stuns the rest of her family. But a scrooge of a determined heir makes sure she never signs the new document. When she is found dead, it's up to that irrepressible spirit Bailey Ruth, on assignment from Wiggins and Heaven's Department of Good Intentions, to protect a little boy, foil a murderer, and save Christmas. There's only one teeny hitch: how can Bailey Ruth figure out which family member was desperate enough to kill when everyone has a motive?" - Amazon.

Christmas is Murder by C. S. Challinor. Midnight Ink, 2008. Print length: 203 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (25 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Christmas in the English countryside — what could be more charming? Not even a blizzard can keep Rex Graves away from Swanmere Manor, a historic hotel in East Sussex. But instead of Christmas cheer, the red-haired Scottish barrister finds a dead guest. Was it a stroke that killed old Mr. Lawry? Or an almond tart laced with poison? When more guests die, all hopes for a jolly holiday are dashed. Worst of all, the remote mansion is buried under beastly snow. No one can leave. Confined with a killer, no one can enjoy their tea without suspicion and scrutiny. Then Rex takes it upon himself to solve the mystery..." - Amazon.

You Better Knot Die by Betty Hechtman. Berkley, 2010. Print length: 304 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99; Hardcover $16.47. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Her crochet group, The Tarzana Hookers, is working overtime for the holidays, but Molly Pink is having trouble finding time to crochet so much as a snowflake. The bookstore where she works is adding a yarn department, and planning a huge launch party where the mysterious author of a popular series will reveal his or her true identity. But before the author appears, another person disappears. The husband of Molly's neighbor is missing. When a suicide note arrives, it appears the husband has jumped off the Catalina Ferry - but Molly smells something fishy. Despite the protestations of her detective boyfriend, Molly's soon hooked on unraveling another mystery... " - Amazon.

A Christmas to Die For by Marta Perry. Steeple Hill Love Inspired Suspense, 2007. Print length: 256 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (8 reviews). Kindle edition $3.12. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"She was lucky to be alive after the hit-and-run that nearly took her life. But history seemed to be repeating itself when Rachel Hampton spied a car speeding down the dark road. Tyler Dunn came to Rachel's family inn seeking justice for a decades-old crime. Rachel wanted to trust the attractive architect, but he was too secretive...until she uncovered a shocking link to her own past. Suddenly a holiday season amid the Plain People swarmed with hidden danger as Rachel found herself a killer's target." - Amazon.


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What People Magazine is Reading This Week (20 Dec 10 Issue)

For those Kindle readers who - like myself - read for entertainment, checking out the book reviews in People magazine is good way to find new people-related books - celebrity bios, popular novels,and nonfiction - just hitting bookstore shelves. Featured in the December 20th issue of People:

As Always Julia, by Joan Reardon. Houghton Mifflin, 2010. Print length: 432 p. NONFICTION. People magazine's slant: "A delicious read and a significant contribution to our understanding of the world as Child knew it." - Meredith Maran. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (19 reviews). Kindle edition $14.04; Hardcover $15.60. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"In 1952, Child was living in Paris when she wrote to Cambridge, Mass., historian Bernard DeVoto after reading his Harper's article about knives. Her letter was answered by his wife, Avis, who soon became her confidante, sounding board, and enthusiastic fellow cook. The two met finally met in person two years later. As a part of the publishing community, Avis (who died in 1989) was responsible for securing the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, steering the book first to Houghton Mifflin and then to its eventual home at Knopf. Their letters span a wide range of topics, from cookbooks, menus, recipes, and restaurants to Balzac, sex, goose stuffing, gardening, learning languages, the political climate, Sunday afternoon cocktail parties, and proofreading. Witty, enlightening and entertaining..." - Publishers Weekly.

Briefly Mentioned:

La's Orchestra Saves the World, by Alexander McCall Smith. Anchor, 2009. Print length: 304 p. NOVEL. People magazine's slant: "...he hasn't run out of warmth or wit." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (55 reviews). Kindle edition $9.89. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...WWII in England...After La Stone's husband leaves her for another woman in France, La retreats to a small cottage in Suffolk given to her by her mortified in-laws. The isolation and peacefulness suit La, who joins the Women's Land Army soon after the outbreak of war. When Feliks Dabrowski, an attractive Polish ex-pat, is assigned to the same farm where La is assisting with chores, La is attracted to him, despite her suspicions that Feliks hasn't been fully truthful about his past. La's idea to launch an amateur local orchestra to boost morale proves an unexpected success and helps give her purpose during the war's darkest days." - Publishers Weekly.

I Shudder - and Other Reactions to Life, Death, and New Jersey, by Paul Rudnick. Harper Collins, 2009. Print length: 336 p. HUMOR. People magazine's slant: "Hilarious essays...Sedaris fans, take note." Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (14 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Best known for his hilarious stage and screen plays, Paul Rudnick courageously takes on a David Sedaris style of memoir with this collection of essays. Rudnick offers a hilarious romp through the many components of his life: from the sweet tooth that landed him in child therapy to his debut Broadway play, I Hate Hamlet - and everything in between. Rudnick's humor comes from his ability to buoyantly portray the large-scale personalities that fill his life, including his Jewish aunts, a neurotic agent and a flamboyant costume-designer friend. With such a cast of characters in his own life, it's no wonder Rudnick developed the comical genius within his hit screenplays: The Addams Family, Sister Act and In & Out.

Books They're Talking About: Kindle Books in the Media (13 Dec 2010)

Media interviews are a popular way for writers to introduce new books they hope will catch the viewer's eye and generate interest in their work. Here's a selection of forthcoming Kindle books by authors scheduled for interviews on TV and radio programs. Books are arranged in chronological order by the date of the scheduled interview.

On NPR's Weekend Edition (11 Dec 2010)

Sherlockian, by Graham Moore. Twelve, 2010. Print Length: 368 p. Kindle edition $11.99; Hardcover $14.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The problem with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories is that there aren’t enough of them. Fans try to fill the gap with spin-offs, some of which work better than others. This engaging riff on the familiar themes by first-novelist Moore is one of the best. His book alternates two stories and two centuries. The modern hero is twentysomething Harold White - mild, bookish, and smart. He’s just been initiated into the prestigious Baker Street Irregulars when a premier Holmes expert announces that he has found Conan Doyle’s long-lost 1900 diary. Then the expert is murdered. Maybe. The game is afoot, and so’s Harold. The hero of the alternate chapters is Conan Doyle himself, gleeful after sending that hawkshaw Holmes to his death at Reichenbach Falls and ready to write real literature. But murders intervene, and he and his friend Bram Stoker must investigate. All these gumshoes, past and present, use Holmes’ methods...Mystery fans should love the mix of historical fiction and contemporary puzzle-solving. And Sherlockians? Try keeping them away. - Don Crinklaw for Booklist.

On NPR's All Things Considered (12 Dec 2010)

Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man's Quest to Preserve the World's Great Animals, by Jay Kirk. Henry Holt and Co., 2010. Print Length: 400 p. Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $18.15. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"During the golden age of safaris in the early twentieth century, one man set out to preserve Africa's great beasts. In this epic account of an extraordinary life lived during remarkable times, Jay Kirk follows the adventures of the brooding genius who revolutionized taxidermy and created the famed African Hall we visit today at New York's Museum of Natural History. The Gilded Age was drawing to a close, and with it came the realization that men may have hunted certain species into oblivion. Renowned taxidermist Carl Akeley joined the hunters rushing to Africa, where he risked death time and again as he stalked animals for his dioramas and hobnobbed with outsized personalities of the era such as Theodore Roosevelt and P. T. Barnum." - Amazon.
"Until reading Kingdom Under Glass I didn't think it was possible to use the words 'fascinating' and 'taxidermy' in the same sentence (at least not with a straight face)...but much of the book is about preserving dead animals, and fascinating it certainly is. This is thanks to gonzo narration by Jay Kirk, who has also written on travel and true crime. His prose is daring - sometimes even a bit wild - and he worms his way convincingly into the minds of his subjects." - The Washington Post.

On C-SPAN's Book TV (12 Dec 2010):

Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices, by Noah Feldman. Twelve, 2010. Print Length: 528 p. Kindle edition $14.99; Hardcover $18.00. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"As a conservative Supreme Court flexes its muscles against a Democratic president for the first time since the New Deal, a series of recent books has explored the constitutional battles of the Roosevelt era and their contemporary relevance. Harvard law professor Feldman's Scorpions focuses more on the battles of the 1940s and 1950s, and it is distinguished by its thesis that the 'distinctive constitutional theories' of Roosevelt's four greatest justices, all of whom began as New Deal liberals - Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert Jackson - have continued to 'cover the whole field of constitutional thought' up to the present day. Feldman argues that Black, the liberal originalist; Douglas, the activist libertarian; Frankfurter, the advocate of strenuous judicial deference; and Jackson, the pragmatist; achieved greatness by developing four unique constitutional approaches, which reflected their own personalities and worldviews... Combining the critical judgments of a legal scholar with political and narrative insight, Feldman is especially good in describing how the clashing personalities and philosophies of his four protagonists were reflected in their negotiations and final opinions... - Publishers Weekly.

On Fox & Friends (13 Dec 2010):

How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace, by Frank M. Ahearn and Eileen C. Horan. Lyons Press, 2010. Print Length: 208 p. Kindle edition $3.79; Hardcover $10.68. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Frank Ahearn and Eileen Horan provide field-tested methods for maintaining privacy, as well as tactics and strategies for protecting personal information and preventing identity theft. They explain and illustrate key tactics such as misinformation (destroying all the data known about you); disinformation (creating fake trails); and, finally, reformation - the act of getting you from point A to point B without leaving clues. Ahearn illustrates every step with real-life stories of his fascinating career, from undercover work to nab thieving department store employees to a stint as a private investigator; and, later, as a career 'skip tracer' who finds people who don’t want to be found. In 1997, when news broke of President Bill Clinton’s dalliance with a White House intern, Ahearn was hired to find her. When Oscar statuettes were stolen in Beverly Hills, Ahearn pinpointed a principal in the caper to help solve the case. When Russell Crowe threw a telephone at a hotel clerk in 2005, Ahearn located the victim and hid him from the media...How to Disappear sums up Ahearn’s dual philosophy: Don’t break the law, but know how to protect yourself." - Amazon.

On C-SPAN's Book TV (13 Dec 2010):

Lion of Liberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation, by Harlow Giles. De Capo Press, 2010. Print Length: 336 p. Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $17.16. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In this action-packed history, award-winning author Harlow Giles Unger unfolds the epic story of Patrick Henry, who roused Americans to fight government tyranny - both British and American. Remembered largely for his cry for 'liberty or death,' Henry was actually the first (and most colorful) of America’s Founding Fathers - first to call Americans to arms against Britain, first to demand a bill of rights, and first to fight the growth of big government after the Revolution. As quick with a rifle as he was with his tongue, Henry was America’s greatest orator and courtroom lawyer, who mixed histrionics and hilarity to provoke tears or laughter from judges and jurors alike." - Amazon.

On NPR's Diane Rehm Show (14 Dec 2010):

Going Home to Glory: A Memoir of Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961-1969, by David Eisenhower, with Julie Nixon Eisenhower. Simon and Schuster, 2010. Print Length: 352 p. Kindle edition $14.99; Hardcover: $16.80. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In this engaging and fascinating memoir, David Eisenhower - whose previous book about his grandfather, Eisenhower: At War 1943-1945, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - provides a uniquely intimate account of the final years of the former president and general, one of the giants of the twentieth century. As the tumultuous 1960s dawned, with assassinations, riots, and the deeply divisive war in Vietnam, plus a Republican nominee for president in 1964 whom Eisenhower considered unqualified, the former president tried to chart the correct course for himself, his party, and the country. Meanwhile, the past continued to pull on him as he wrote his memoirs, and publishers and broadcasters asked him to reminisce about his wartime experiences. With a grandson’s love and devotion but with a historian’s candor and insight, David Eisenhower has written a remarkable book about the final years of a great American whose stature continues to grow." - Amazon.