Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

About the Author
Novella Carpenter grew up in rural Idaho and Washington State. She went to University of Washington in Seattle where she majored in Biology and English. She later studied under Michael Pollan at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism for two years. She's had many odd jobs including: assassin bug handler, book editor, media projectionist, hamster oocyte collector, and most recently, journalist. Her writing has appeared in Salon.com, Saveur.com, sfgate.com (the SF Chronicle 's website), and Mother Jones. She has been cultivating her farm in the city for over ten years now, and her neighbors still think she's crazy. It all started with a few chickens, then some bees, until she had a full-blown farm near downtown Oakland, where she lives today.

Synopsis

An unforgettably charming memoir, Farm City is full of hilarious moments, fascinating farmer's tips, and a great deal of heart. When Novella Carpenter — captivated by the idea of backyard self-sufficiency — moved to inner city Oakland and discovered a weed-choked, garbage- strewn abandoned lot next door to her house, she closed her eyes and pictured heirloom tomatoes and a chicken coop. The story of how her urban farm grew from a few chickens to one populated with turkeys, geese, rabbits, ducks, and two three-hundred-pound pigs will capture the imagination of anyone who has ever considered leaving the city behind for a more natural lifestyle.

Novella Carpenter loves cities — the culture, the crowds, the energy. At the same time, she can't shake the fact that she is the daughter of two back-to-the-land hippies who taught her to love nature and eat vegetables. Ambivalent about repeating her parents' disastrous mistakes, yet drawn to the idea of backyard self-sufficiency, Carpenter decided that it might be possible to have it both ways: a homegrown vegetable plot as well as museums, bars, concerts, and a twenty-four-hour convenience mart mere minutes away. Especially when she moved to a ramshackle house in inner city Oakland and discovered a weed-choked, garbage-strewn abandoned lot next door. She closed her eyes and pictured heirloom tomatoes, a beehive, and a chicken coop. What started out as a few egg-laying chickens led to turkeys, geese, and ducks. Soon, some rabbits joined the fun, then two three-hundred-pound pigs. And no, these charming and eccentric animals weren't pets; she was a farmer, not a zookeeper. Novella was raising these animals for dinner. Novella Carpenter's corner of downtown Oakland is populated by unforgettable characters. Lana (anal spelled backward, she reminds us) runs a speakeasy across the street and refuses to hurt even a fly, let alone condone raising turkeys for Thanksgiving. Bobby, the homeless man who collects cars and car parts just outside the farm, is an invaluable neighborhood concierge. The turkeys, Harold and Maude, tend to escape on a daily basis to cavort with the prostitutes hanging around just off the highway nearby. Every day on this strange and beautiful farm, urban meets rural in the most surprising ways. For anyone who has ever grown herbs on their windowsill, tomatoes on their fire escape, or obsessed over the offerings at the local farmers' market, Carpenter's story will capture your heart. And if you've ever considered leaving it all behind to become a farmer outside the city limits, or looked at the abandoned lot next door with a gleam in your eye, consider this both a cautionary tale and a full-throated call to action. Farm City is an unforgettably charming memoir, full of hilarious moments, fascinating farmers' tips, and a great deal of heart. It is also a moving meditation on urban life versus the natural world and what we have given up to live the way we do.

Courage is not an Image

"Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is that quiet voice at the end of the day that says...I will try again tomorrow."-Mary Anne Radmacher.

Courage comes from our mind and from ourselves according to the existing conditions. When we think about courage, generally, heroes and their heroism come to our mind but it is a quality of spirit that enables you to face danger or pain. It's a quiet voice that gives them the strength to go on for another day. And it shows our confidence level and of sometimes in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Courage automatically comes out from our minds but should not be estimated by showing external physique or personality.

In our day-to-day lives, the virtue of courage doesn't receive much attention. Courage is a quality reserved for soldiers, firefighters, and activists. But sometimes people who always afraid of certain things show their courage when the situation comes. Not only at hurdles or troubles or fearful things, but one should be courageous in doing the things like in decision-making, helping others, to comment others or to complement others and so on.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.

And we have the quote: Fortune favours Brave.

CHANGE: Change or Accept

Change is not easy. But it is simple. We know that Things will always change. And we do not have a choice about that change, but we do have a choice on how we react to change. It is in our hads how to react to that unbelievable or believable change. The choice really boils down to this...either we manage change, or it will manage us. As a leader, however, deciding to make changes is the easy part. Getting your people on board is much more difficult. Why is that? Quite simply, change is an emotional process. We are all creatures of habit who usually resist it, and welcome routine. Uncharted waters are scary! The truth, of course, is that change can be a wonderful gift. In fact, it is the key that unlocks the doors to growth and excitement in any organization. And, most importantly, without it...your competition will pass you by. And we can say, change should be mandatory. Change should be there. As a leader, a big part of success will be your ability to inspire your team to get out of their comfort zones; to assure them that even though they are on a new path, it's the right path, for the right reasons.

So, finally.... it is on our attitude about change because we know everything is predetermined and predestined. Whatever the change we observe, we have to accept or if we can't accept then we can change. Is it? Is it possible? yes. If we changed it, then it is also a change already predestined. Anyways, we welcome change, we must. Because Change is Good.

Finally....

Accept what we cannot Change or

Change what we cannot Accept.

A Circle of Souls

About the Author:

Preetham Grandhi, an India-born immigrant, explores his life parallels in a new kind of psychological thriller and debut novel, A Circle of Souls. Born and raised in the city of Bangalore, India, Preetham mirrored the struggles of upper-middle class lives, acculturation, and psychological trauma through the characters of this well-sculpted thriller. Preetham’s childhood determination for success and change leads to a new life in the USA. His hope is that the land of opportunity would close old doors and open new beginnings. In a twist of fate, he found himself working with children and their families in the inner city Bronx, families who had even more complex issues than his own. Through their eyes and life experiences, he was motivated to become someone he never thought he would become, an author.

After investing five years in writing, he then encountered the struggle of becoming a traditionally published author. Now in June 2009, in the midst of economic crises and nationwide corporation mismanagement, comes A Circle of Souls, a tale of hope, justice, and accountability. This spirit-lifting and thought-provoking story has received rave reviews.

Review:

"This is Preetham Grandhi's debut novel, but you wouldn't know that from reading the book....full of suspense and alternates between different view points which added to the thrill of the book. The author has added some medical, psychological and supernatural elements.

The sleepy town of Newbury, Connecticut, is shocked when a little girl is found brutally murdered. The town's top detective, perplexed by a complete lack of leads, calls in FBI agent Leia Bines, an expert in cases involving children.
Meanwhile, Dr. Peter Gram, a psychiatrist at Newbury's hospital, searches desperately for the cause of seven-year-old Naya Hastings' devastating nightmares. Afraid that she might hurt herself in the midst of a torturous episode, Naya's parents have turned to the bright young doctor as their only hope.
The situations confronting Leia and Peter converge when Naya begins drawing chilling images of murder after being bombarded by the disturbing images in her dreams. Amazingly, her sketches are the only clues to the crime that has panicked Newbury residents. Against her better judgment, Leia explores the clues in Naya's crude drawings, only to set off an alarming chain of events.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

About the Author

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. The most recent of his many honors is the Yomiuri Literary Prize, whose previous recipients include Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe, and Kobo Abe. He is the author of the novels Dance, Dance, Dance; Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World; A Wild Sheep Chase; South of the Border, West of the Sun; and Sputnik Sweetheart; of The Elephant Vanishes, a collection of stories; and of Underground, a work of non-fiction. His work has been translated into fourteen languages.

Review

"[A] big, ambitious book clearly intended to establish Murakami as a major figure in world literature....The new book almost self-consciously deals with a wide spectrum of heavy subjects....[It] marks a significant advance in Murakami's art....Murakami has written a bold and generous book, and one that would have lost a great deal by being tidied up." Jamie James, The New York Times Book Review

Haruki Murakami is generally considered the greatest Japanese writer of his generation, but at times he seems more in tune with the culture of the West than of his native country. Throughout his work, the food, music, movies, and literature references will generally be familiar to western readers. When one of his characters makes dinner, it is just as likely spaghetti as sushi; when they read a novel it is probably Hemingway or Salinger; when one of his characters puts on an album it is British or American pop (he even named a novel after a Beatles song). This preoccupation with the cultural trappings of the West makes Murakami highly accessible to westerner readers, and accounts, in part, for his tremendous popularity here.
But he is even more successful in Japan (his elegiac Norwegian Wood sold an astounding four million copies). Perhaps Murakami is so popular with the Japanese in part because his characters seek their cultural anchors abroad. A central theme in Murakami's work is the feeling among many Japanese that they have lost the clear sense of self, the firm identity, they had before the war. And nowhere in his impressive body of work has he explored this experience more deeply, or expressed it more powerfully, than in his most ambitious work to date, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.
The story begins with the disappearance of Toru Okada's wife's cat, which is immediately followed by the disappearance of the wife, herself. Mild-mannered Toru sets out to find out where they went and why. He discovers much more than he bargained for: a precocious teenager, a pair of psychic sisters, a haunted veteran of Japan's war in Manchuria, a perfectly corrupt politician, and a strangely appealing well in a neighbor's yard. In his quest, Toru only succeeds in raising more perplexing questions, but his discoveries do shed startling light on the roots of the Japanese malaise. Surreal, insightful, quirky, and surprisingly affecting, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle has further proved Murakami's status as a world-class writer.

Paint It Black

About the Author
Janet Fitch's first novel, White Oleander, a #1 bestseller and Oprah's Book Club selection, has been translated into 24 languages and was made into a feature film. A native of Los Angeles, Fitch currently teaches fictionwriting in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California.

Synopsis
From the bestselling author of White Oleander comes a powerful story of passion, first love, and a young woman's search for a true world in the aftermath of loss.

Josie Tyrell, art model, teen runaway, and denizen of LA's 1980 punk rock scene, finds a chance at real love with art student Michael Faraday. A Harvard dropout and son of a renowned pianist, Michael introduces her to his spiritual quest and a world of sophistication she had never dreamed existed. But when she receives a call from the Los Angeles County Coroner, asking her to identify her lover's dead body, her bright dreams all turn to black.

"What happens to a dream when the dreamer is gone?" is the central question of Paint it Black, the story of the aftermath of Michael's death, and Josie's struggle to hold onto the true world he shared with her. As Josie searches for the key to understanding his death, she finds herself both repelled and attracted to Michael's pianist mother, Meredith, who holds Josie responsible for her son's torment. Soon, the two women find themselves drawn into a twisted relationship reflecting equal parts distrust and blind need.
Passionate, wounded, fiercely alive, Josie Tyrell walks the brink of her own destruction as she fights to discover the meaning of Michael's death. With the luxurious prose and emotional intensity that are her hallmarks, Janet Fitch has written a spellbinding new novel about love, betrayal, and the possibility of transcendence.

Tijuana Straits

About the Author:

Kem Nunn is an American fiction novelist, surfer, magazine and television writer from California. His novels have been described as "surf-noir" for their dark themes, political overtones and surf settings. He is the author of five novels, including his seminal surf novel Tapping the Source.

He has collaborated with HBO Producer David Milch on the show Deadwood and with Milch co-produced the HBO series John from Cincinnati, a surfing series set in Imperial Beach, California which premiered on June 10, 2007.

Review

"Sam Fahey, an ex-con and ex-surfer now running a worm farm, is tracking a pack of feral dogs in the Tijuana River Valley when he encounters a badly beaten Mexican woman stumbling across the dunes near Tijuana Straits, a legendary surf spot. But surfing is only a backdrop in Nunn's intense, beautifully written literary thriller; the novel's real subject is the lawless U.S.-Mexico border, and its real story revolves around three damaged lives: the Mexican refugee, an activist named Magdalena Rivera fighting for economic and environmental justice in industrial Tijuana; Armando Santoya, whose life spirals into a drug-fueled rage when his baby is poisoned by the toxic chemicals his wife works with; and Fahey himself, a fully realized antihero struggling to atone for his own troubled life. In a series of long flashbacks, Nunn relates their backstories — along with the painful history of a rugged chunk of the Southern California coast — setting the stage for a powerful, visceral denouement. The novel is an elegy of lost innocence, an exploration of the corrupting power of greed and progress on the land and the people, but its triumph is the complete integration of character and plot. This is a sad but deeply satisfying and intensely moving story. With this fifth novel, Nunn has written a terrific book that more than affirms the promise of his early work.

When Fahey, once a great surfer, now a reclusive ex-con, meets Magdalena, she is running from a pack of wild dogs along the ragged wasteland where California and Mexico meet the Pacific Ocean — a spot once known to the men who rode its giant waves as the Tijuana Straits. Magdalena has barely survived an attack that forced her to flee Tijuana, and Fahey takes her in. That he is willing to do so runs contrary to his every instinct, for Fahey is done with the world, seeking little more than solitude from this all-but-forgotten corner of the Golden State. Nor is Fahey a stranger to the lawless ways of the border. He worries that in sheltering this woman he may not only be inviting further entanglements but may be placing them both at risk. In this, he is not wrong.

An environmental activist, Magdalena has become engaged in the struggle for the health and rights of the thousands of peasants streaming from Mexico's enervated heartland to work in the maquilladoras — the foreign-owned factories that line her country's border, polluting its air and fouling its rivers. It is a risky contest. Danger can come from many directions, from government officials paid to preserve the status quo to thugs hired to intimidate reformers.
As Magdalena and Fahey become closer, Magdalena tries to discover who is out to get her, attempting to reconstruct the events that delivered her, battered and confused, into Fahey's strange yet oddly seductive world. She examines every lead, never guessing the truth. For into this no-man's-land between two countries comes a trio of killers led by Armando Santoya, a man beset by personal tragedy, an aberration born of the very conditions Magdalena has dedicated her life to fight against, yet who in the throes of his own drug-fueled confusions has marked her for death. And so will Fahey be put to the test, in a final duel on the beaches of his Tijuana Straits.

Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen

About the Author:

Susan Gregg Gilmore has written for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the Los Angeles Times, and the Christian Science Monitor.

Review:

The town of Ringgold, Georgia, has a population of 1,923, one traffic light, one Dairy Queen, and one Catherine Grace Cline. Quickwitted and more than a little stubborn, Catherine Grace is dying to escape her small-town life.
When her dream to go to Atlanta becomes a reality, she immediately makes the move, leaving behind the boy she loves. But all too soon, tragedy brings Catherine Grace back home. As a series of extraordinary events alter her perspective, Catherine Grace begins to wonder if her place in the world may actually be, against all odds, right where she began.

Sometimes you have to return to the place where you began, to arrive at the place where you belong.

It's the early 1970s. The town of Ringgold, Georgia, has a population of 1,923, one traffic light, one Dairy Queen, and one Catherine Grace Cline. The daughter of Ringgold's third-generation Baptist preacher, Catherine Grace is quick-witted, more than a little stubborn, and dying to escape her small-town life.
Every Saturday afternoon, she sits at the Dairy Queen, eating Dilly Bars and plotting her getaway to the big city of Atlanta. And when, with the help of a family friend, the dream becomes a reality, Catherine Grace immediately packs her bags, leaving her family and the boy she loves to claim the life she's always imagined. But before things have even begun to get off the ground in Atlanta, tragedy brings her back home. As a series of extraordinary events alters her perspective — and sweeping changes come to Ringgold itself-Catherine Grace begins to wonder if her place in the world may actually be, against all odds, right where she began.

"Every female will find herself identifying with Catherine Grace's search for her place in the world." Chattanooga Times Free Press

"Susan Gregg Gilmore's debut novel, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, is storytelling at its best, entertaining and lively and full of surprises. Catherine Grace Cline, the endearing witty heroine, gives her domestic journey titles of Biblical proportion as she finds more than salvation along the way." Jill McCorkle, author of Carolina Moon

Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

About the Author:
Mignon Fogarty is the creator of Grammar Girl and founder of the Quick and Dirty Tips Network. A technical writer and entrepreneur, she has served as an editor and producer at a number of health and science Web sites. She has a B.A. in English from the University of Washington in Seattle and an M.S. in biology from Stanford University. She lives in Reno, Nevada.

"Grammar Girl's daily e-mail tips and podcasts are invaluable. And now, congratulations on a year on paper, Grammar Girl! This book should be on every writer's shelf, and in this age of e-mail and blogs, that's almost everyone."

Review:

Mignon Fogarty, a.k.a. Grammar Girl, is determined to wipe out bad grammarbut shes also determined to make the process as painless as possible. One year ago, she created a weekly podcast to tackle some of the most common mistakes people make while communicating. The podcasts have now been downloaded more than seven million times, and Mignon has dispensed grammar tips on Oprah and appeared on the pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.
Written with the wit, warmth, and accessibility that the podcasts are known for, Grammar Girls Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing covers the grammar rules and word-choice guidelines that can confound even the best writers. From “between vs. among” and “although vs. while” to comma splices and misplaced modifiers, Mignon offers memory tricks and clear explanations that will help readers recall and apply those troublesome grammar rules. Chock-full of tips on style, business writing, and effective e-mailing, Grammar Girls print debut deserves a spot on every communicators desk.

If Nobody speaks of Remarkable Things

About the Author

Jon McGregor is twenty-six, and this is his first novel. It was published in Britain in 2002 to critical acclaim, and was inspired in part by the phenomenal media attention that surrounded the death of Princess Diana. Around the same time, a young man was shot in McGregor’s own neighborhood; the novel, he writes, is about “how the everyday miracles of life and death go unwitnessed in favor of celebrity and sensation, and the difficulty of experiencing community in an increasingly transient society.” McGregor lives in Nottingham, England.

Review:

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things is a haunting story of the events that transpire over a single day at the end of summer on a small urban street in England. Risky in conception and "daringly un-ironic" for our times, this is a prose poem of a novel — intense and highly evocative — with a whodunit at its center, which keeps the reader in suspense until the final page.
In delicate, intricately observed close-up, we are invited into the private lives of the street's residents to witness their hopes, fears, and unspoken despairs: the man with scarred hands who tried in vain to save his wife from a burning house, a group of young club-goers just home from an all-night rave, the nervous young man at number 18 who collects weird junk and is haunted by the specter of unrequited love.
The peace and tranquility of the unexceptional day are shattered at day's end when the street becomes the scene of a terrible accident. This tragedy and an utterly surprising twist provide the momentum for the book. But it is the author's exquisite rendition of the ordinary, the everyday, that gives this novel its original freshness, its sense of beauty, wonder, and hope.

Banana Heart Summer

About the Author

Merlinda Bobis has received numerous awards, prizes and fellowships for her fiction, poetry and plays, among them the Prix Italia for Rita's Lullaby, the Steel Rudd Award for the Best Published Collection of Australian Short Stories, the Judges' Choice Award (Bumbershoot Bookfair, Seattle Arts Festival) and the Philippine National Book Award for White Turtle, or The Kissing, and the Philippine Balagtas Award, a lifetime achievement award for her fiction and poetry in English, Pilipino and Bicol. Her plays have been performed in Australia, the Philippines, France, China, Thailand and the Slovak Republic. Banana Heart Summer is her first novel; its Australian edition was short-listed for the Australian Literary Society Gold Medal. Her second novel, The Solemn Lantern Maker, will be released in the U.S. in 2009. As a performer for stage and radio, Merlinda works with artists from various genres. She lives in Australia where she teaches creative writing.

"...[D]elicious, wise, funny, warm, glorious and heartbreaking....The second reading was even more delectable....this is a book to savor. Merlinda Bobis is a poet and wise woman."

Review:

"Poet Bobis serves up compassion and tenderness in generous portions in her fiction debut. Twelve-year-old Nenita is the first of six children born to her destitute parents in a Filipino village. Hungry and abused by her overwhelmed mother, Nenita drops out of school one summer in the hopes of earning enough money to support the growing family. Hired as the house girl of her well-to-do neighbors, the Valenzuelas, she befriends her mistress, the beautiful Seorita VV. The entire village experiences profound change during that sweltering summer, mirroring Nenita's coming-of-age. Nenita's passion for food sustains her through difficulties of all sorts, and she relishes each morsel and taste as a treasured gift, even as she faces continued difficulty." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

In her lush, luminous debut novel, Merlinda Bobis creates a dazzling feast for all the senses. Richly imagined, gloriously written, Banana Heart Summer is an incandescent tale of food, family, and longing — at once a love letter to mothers and daughters and a lively celebration of friendship and community.
Twelve-year-old Nenita is hungry for everything: food, love, life. Growing up with five sisters and brothers, she searches for happiness in the magical smell of the deep-frying bananas of Nana Dora, who first tells Nenita the myth of the banana heart; in the tantalizing scent of Manolito, the heartthrob of Nenita and her friends; in the pungent aromas of the dishes she prepares for the most beautiful woman on Remedios Street. To Nenita, food is synonymous with love — the love she yearns to receive from her disappointed mother. But in this summer of broken hearts, new friendships, secrets, and discoveries, change will be as sudden and explosive as the monsoon that marks the end of the sweltering heat — and transforms Nenita's young life in ways she could never imagine.

Down River

About the Author: John Hart was born and raised in North Carolina. He earned degrees in French, accounting, and law, but always aspired to write novels. After careers in law and asset management, John now writes full-time. He still makes his home in North Carolina, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.

Review: "Complex relationships blur the lines between friend and foe, heightening the suspense in this intricate, haunting story of a family in crisis, and the writing is simply superb. Highly recommended."

Everything that shaped him happened near that river... Now its banks are filled with lies and greed, shame, and murder... John Hart's debut, The King of Lies, was compelling and lyrical, with Janet Maslin of The New York Times declaring, "There hasn't been a thriller as showily literate since Scott Turow came along. "Now, in Down River, Hart makes a scorching return to Rowan County, where he drives his characters to the edge, explores the dark side of human nature, and questions the fundamental power of forgiveness. Adam Chase has a violent streak, and not without reason. As a boy, he saw things that no child should see, suffered wounds that cut to the core and scarred thin. The trauma left him passionate and misunderstood — a fighter. After being narrowly acquitted of a murder charge, Adam is hounded out of the only home he's ever known, exiled for a sin he did not commit. For five long years he disappears, fades into the faceless gray of New York City. Now he's back and nobody knows why, not his family or the cops, not the enemies he left behind. But Adam has his reasons. Within hours of his return, he is beaten and accosted, confronted by his family and the women he still holds dear. No one knows what to make of Adam's return, but when bodies start turning up, the small town rises against him and Adam again finds himself embroiled in the fight of his life, not just to prove his own innocence, but to reclaim the only life he's ever wanted. Bestselling author John Hart holds nothing back as he strips his characters bare. Secrets explode, emotions tear, and more than one person crosses the brink into deadly behavior as he examines the lengths to which people will go for money, family, and revenge. A powerful, heart-pounding thriller, Down River will haunt your thoughts long after the last page is turned.

The Best American Travel Writing

About the Author

Anthony Bourdain, best-selling writer, chef, television host, and traveler, edits this year's collection of the finest travel writing from the past year. Easy to read and hard to put down, these essays capture with fine detail the extraordinary wonder of travel (Chicago Sun Times).
In his introduction fearful, sublime, and absurd; the small epiphanies familiar to the full-time traveler, interspersed by a sense of dislocation--and the strange, unholy need to record the experience. With this in mind, Bourdain and series editor Jason Wilson have assembled a wide-ranging and wonderfully eclectic collection that delves headlong into those darker moments and subtle realizations, looking to absorb, provoke, and offer a moving record of what it means to travel in the twenty-first cto The Best American Travel Writing 2008, editor Anthony Bourdain writes that the pieces that spoke the loudest and most powerfully to me were usually evocative of the darker side, those moments entury.
Here you will find Seth Stevenson's extraordinary experience of Looking for Mammon in the Muslim World as he makes his way through sweltering and paradoxical Dubai. Exotic tastes and larger-than-life personalities abound as Bill Buford accompanies the chocolate maker Frederick Schilling to the rain forests of Brazil. And on the other side of the world, Calvin Trillin trolls Singapore for the ultimate street food, while Kristin Ohlson delves into the harrowing challenges faced by proprietors of restaurants in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The twenty-five pieces in this collection have their fair share of the absurd as well. David Sedaris explains the hilarious highs (sundaes) and woeful lows (sobbing with your seatmate) of flying Business Elite. Gary Shteyngart goes To Russia for Love during St. Petersburg's vodka-soaked wedding season. And Emily Maloney gets up close and personal with her fellow travelers -- and their massage devices -- in a South American hostel.
Culled from an amazingvariety of publications, the writing in this volume is so vibrantly good, you'll feel like you've armchair-traveled around the world (Chicago Sun Times).

A Hunt for Justice: The True Story of a Woman Undercover Wildlife Agent

About the Author: Lucinda D. Schroeder was a special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 1974 to 2004. She was not allowed to write about her experiences until she retired, but in 1994, she appeared on A&E to discuss the operation. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Synopsis:An explosive first-person account of an illegal Alaskan big-game hunting camp brought down by one woman.

For thirty years, Lucinda Delaney Schroeder held an unusual government position: she was one of the handful of women special agents with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Her job: to investigate crimes against wildlife. Unlike the majority of hunters who respect both their prey and the laws, evidence was piling up against an unscrupulous outfitter who was decimating populations of big game in Alaska's Brooks Range. In August 1992, she accepted an assignment that forever changed and endangered her life. She left her husband and seven-year-old daughter behind in Wisconsin and posed as a big-game hunter in Alaska in order to infiltrate an international ring of poachers out to kill the biggest and best of that state's wildlife.
A Hunt for Justice recounts her dramatic story a story she was not legally permitted to write about until her retirement in 2004.
Risking personal safety, Schroeder joined a team of government agents to expose and arrest the poachers. Posing as "Jayne," a divorcee who was willing to break the rules in order to hunt trophy animals, the diminutive blue-eyed blonde fooled criminals so wily that their crimes could only be cracked from within. A Hunt for Justice takes readers along on Schroeder's dangerous and exciting mission. More than simply an adventure or true-crime tale, it's a story of a woman surviving in a male-dominated field, a woman against the wilderness, and a wife and mother risking it all for a cause she believes in. Whether you are a crime buff, nature lover, sports hunter, or someone who just loves a gripping-first-person tale of justice triumphing over evil, this book is for you.

"This consistently engrossing first-person account by a retired special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service gives readers the inside track on a 1992 undercover hunt for illegal poachers in the Alaskan wilderness. One of nine women in an often misogynist agency of 210, Schroeder brings to life a motley crew of characters. Lewd, unreliable and usually drunk Roy Hanson is a paid informant who poses as the happily married Schroeder's 'boyfriend' and hunting partner. Moose James, a poacher and cunning guide who treats his wife like a servant, bolsters his big ego with the carcasses of hundreds of grizzly bears, bighorn sheep and other trophy animals. The mastermind behind a secret operation that guarantees rich hunters their quarry by herding animals with small planes, Bob Bowman brags that he'll kill any undercover cop who infiltrates his camp. A Spanish client, Pedro, is shameless about his greed: 'Every hunter should get what they want, no matter what it takes.' Although the penalties imposed by the undercover sting seem unusually light given the danger, and the time, money and energy expended, and the line between legal 'harvesting' and illegal poaching will blur for nonhunters, Schroeder illuminates an unusual, insular world with unflinching grit and good humour."

About the Author: Rob Rogers lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas. Devil's Cape is his first novel.

Synopsis:

A city where corruption and heroism walk hand-in-hand, and justice and mercy are bought and paid-for in blood, Devil's Cape is a city like no other. Rogers blends the gritty crime novel with a heavy dose of the supernatural and weaves a tale of superhuman heroes and villains.

If New Orleans has earned its "Sin City" nickname for its debauchery, then its nearby sister Devil's Cape has earned its "Pirate Town" moniker for the violence and blatant corruption that have marred the city since its founding. A city where corruption and heroism walk hand-in-hand, and justice and mercy are bought and paid-for in blood, Devil's Cape is a city like no other.

Devil's Cape is a novel like no other. It blends the gritty crime novel with a heavy dose of the supernatural and weaves a tale of superhuman heroes and villains. Briskly written and highly readable, Devil's Cape will appeal to a wide audience.

I would love to use it as a class novel, but it might be a touch too violent -- or at least for their parents.

The Book of Getting Even

Author: Benjamin Taylor is the author of the novel Tales Out of School, which won the 1996 Harold Ribalow Prize and is available in paperback from Zoland Books, an imprint of Steerforth Press. He is editor of The Letters of Saul Bellow, scheduled for publication in 2009. His travel memoir, Naples Declared, will be published in 2010.

Son of a rabbi, budding astronomer Gabriel Geismar is on his way from youth to manhood in the 1970s when he falls in love with the esteemed and beguiling Hundert family, different in every way from his own. Over the course of a decade-long drama unfolding in New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and the Wisconsin countryside, Gabriel enters more and more passionately and intimately into the world of his elective clan, discovering at the inmost center that he alone must bear the full weight of their tragedies, past and present. Yet The Book of Getting Even is funny and robust, a novel rich in those fundamentals we go to great fiction for: the exploration of what is hidden, the sudden shocks, the feeling at last of life laid bare.

"In this delightful, character-driven coming-of-age novel, Gabriel Geismar grows up in mid — 20th-century New Orleans as the only son of a rabbi, maturing into a brilliant, homosexual mathematician who is out of sync with his father's values. At Swarthmore in 1970, Gabriel meets the twins Daniel and Marghie Hundert, the children of Nobel Prize — winning physicist Gregor Hundert, one of the so-called Hungarian Eight who emigrated to America and worked with Robert Oppenheimer on the bomb. Fascinated by the stately, Old World professor and his kindly wife, Lilo, and deeply attached to Marghie, a cinema-obsessed vegetarian, and to Daniel, an angry counterculture figure, Gabriel spends the summer with the family at their Wisconsin retreat, which yields cherished conversation and understanding. As Gabriel departs to study astrophysics at the University of Chicago, the tempo of Daniel's activism builds, and Marghie begins running a movie house. When the once great professor sinks into senile dementia, Lilo makes a necessary but terrible decision for them all. The editor of Saul Bellow's forthcoming letters, Taylor turns in a smart, humane look at what Gabriel calls the era's 'intergenerational rancor.'" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Author: Esther Freud is the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and the daughter of the painter Lucian Freud. She trained as an actress before writing her first novel. Her books have been translated into thirteen languages. She lives in London.

From the author of Hideous Kinky comes a charming, surprising, and utterly irresistible tale of adolescent love and self-discovery.

When seventeen-year-old Lara accepts her father's invitation to accompany him to a Tuscan villa for the summer, she's both thrilled and nervous for the exotic holiday. To her delight, she soon discovers that the villa's closest neighbors are the glamorous Willoughbys, the teenaged brood of a British millionaire. Caught up in their torrential thirst for amusement — and snared by Kip Willoughby's dark, flirtatious eyes — Lara sets off on a summer adventure full of danger, first love, and untold consequences that will irrevocably change her life.

"Freud, who is Sigmund Freud's great-granddaughter and Lucien Freud's daughter, echoes some of the autobiographical material that enlivened her debut and biggest success, Hideous Kinky , in this sixth novel. Lara, 17, is already a veteran of a transformative journey to the Far East with her mother as she sets out on a very different trip, from London to Italy with her reclusive father, Lambert. Lara's adolescent turns of mind, her changing relationship with 'Lamb' and her utterly contradictory (and utterly human) desires to be both in the world and safe at home make for a surprising and convincing character study. But Freud's engaging, insightful writing is undermined by antique plot devices: is Lamb also the father of Kip Willoughby, the cute boy at the adjacent villa? Was Kip conceived in an act of sexual revenge? Did the Willoughbys' grandfather once renege on a promise to bring Lara's grandparents out of WWII Germany? Still, the soap-opera drama doesn't ruin the book: one wants to remain with Freud's lively voice and to see what Lara makes of it all." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Maps and Legends

Author: Michael Chabon is the author of two novels, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys, and of a previous collection of stories, A Model World. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and two children.

Michael Chabon's sparkling first book of nonfiction is a love song in 16 parts — a series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the false walls around "serious" literature in favor of a wide-ranging affection. His own fiction, meanwhile, is explored from the perspective of personal history: post-collegiate desperation sparks his debut, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; procrastination and doubt reveal the way toward Wonder Boys; a love of comics and a basement golem combine to create the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; and an enigmatic Yiddish phrasebook unfurls into The Yiddish Policeman's Union.

"You would hardly think, reading Chabon's new book of essays, that he won the Pulitzer Prize for a book about comics. Rather, he is bitter and defensive about his love for genre fiction such as mysteries and comic books. Serious writers, he says, cannot venture into these genres without losing credibility. 'No self-respecting literary genius... would ever describe him- or herself as primarily an 'entertainer,' ' Chabon writes. 'An entertainer is a man in a sequined dinner jacket, singing 'She's a Lady' to a hall filled with women rubber-banding their underwear up onto the stage.' Chabon devotes most of the essays to examining specific genres that he admires, from M.R. James's ghost stories to Cormac McCarthy's apocalyptic work, The Road. The remaining handful of essays are more memoir-focused, with Chabon explaining how he came to write many of his books. Chabon casts himself as one of the few brave souls willing to face ridicule — from whom isn't entirely clear, though it seems to be academics — to write as he wishes. 'I write from the place I live: in exile,' he says. It's hard to imagine the audience for this book. Chabon seems to want to debate English professors, but surely only his fellow comic-book lovers will be interested in his tirade." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Waiting for the Barbarians

Author: J. M. Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1940. His many literary prizes include the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature, Lannan Award for Fiction, the CNA Prize, the Booker Prize, the Jerusalem Prize, and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize.

Moving and powerful, this book presents the dark tale of an aging magistrate in an African frontier settlement, who finds himself becoming increasingly sympathetic toward the indigenous "barbarians" that the colonial empire's forces brutalize.

For decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Jolted into sympathy for their victims, he commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state.

J. M. Coetzee's prize-winning novel is a startling allegory of the war between opressor and opressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times; his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.

"The book makes for compelling reading, largely due to the successful use of the present tense throughout and the vivid presentation of unfolding events."

Fool on the Hill (A Tess Camillo Mystery)

Author: Morgan Hunt was raised along the Jersey shore. A stint in the Navy brought her to San Diego, the location of her Tess Camillo mysteries, where she lived for 27 years. Now a resident of the Pacific Northwest, this cancer and mastectomy survivor hopes her mysteries provide laughter, distraction, and zest to others facing personal challenges.

For Tess Camillo and her roommate Lana, attending the concert of guitarist Cody Crowne should be excitement enough. But the next day, Tess discovers the singer dead-crucified, actually. Was this some religious nut? A jilted lover?His jealous writing partner? Tess finds herself drawn to a case that takes her from the Los Angeles music scene to a creepy religious organization, with danger shadowing her every move.

"Morgan Hunt's follow up to "Sticky Fingers" was everything I hoped it would be: the lyric-related title, the unusual method of murder...and the complex capers of Tess Camillo, San Diego lesbian computer-jockey/math-lover

/cancer survivor/lusty lady on the verge of menopause looking for love, justice and Italian food."