Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, by David Sedaris. Little, Brown and Company. Print length: 176 p. FICTION. EW's slant: "...the humorist, long a droll chronicler of human foibles, turns his absurdist wit and opposable thumbs to fables of the feathered and four-legged....toxic little treats, fun-sized Snickers bars with a nougaty strychnine center." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Featuring David Sedaris's unique blend of hilarity and heart, this new collection of keen-eyed animal-themed tales is an utter delight. Though the characters may not be human, the situations in these stories bear an uncanny resemblance to the insanity of everyday life. In The Toad, the Turtle, and the Duck, three strangers commiserate about animal bureaucracy while waiting in a complaint line. In Hello Kitty, a cynical feline struggles to sit through his prison-mandated AA meetings. In The Squirrel and the Chipmunk, a pair of star-crossed lovers is separated by prejudiced family members." - Amazon.
By Nightfall, by Michael Cunningham. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Print length: 256 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "There are sentences here so powerfully precise and beautiful that they almost hover above the page." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Peter and his wife, Rebecca - who edits a mid-level art magazine - have settled into a comfortable life in Manhattan's art world, but their staid existence is disrupted by the arrival of Rebecca's much younger brother, Ethan - known as Mizzy, short for 'The Mistake.' Family golden child Mizzy is a recovering drug addict whose current whim has landed him in New York where he wants to pursue a career in 'the arts.' Watching Mizzy - whose resemblance to a younger Rebecca unnerves Peter - coast through life without responsibilities makes Peter question his own choices and wonder if it's more than Mizzy's freedom that he covets. Cunningham's sentences are, individually, something to behold, but they're unfortunately pressed into the service of a dud story about a well-off New Yorker's existential crisis." - Publishers Weekly.
Nashville Chrome, by Rick Bass. Houghton Mifflin. Print length: 272 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...sweeps you along just as the real-life Browns' music once carried away listeners." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Late in 1959, the Brown siblings - Maxine, Bonnie, and Jim Ed - were enjoying unprecedented international success, rivaled only by their longtime friend Elvis Presley. They had a bona fide megahit on their hands, which topped both the country and pop charts and gave rise to the polished sound of the multibillion dollar country music industry we know today. Mesmerized by the Browns' haunting harmonies, the Beatles even tried to learn their secret. Their unique harmony, however, was only achievable through shared blood, and the trio's perfect pitch was honed by a childhood spent listening for the elusive pulse and tone of an impeccably tempered blade at their parent's Arkansas sawmill. But the Browns' celebrity couldn't survive the world changing around them, and the bonds of family began to fray along with the fame. Heartbreakingly, the novel jumps between the Browns' promising past and the present, which finds Maxine - once supremely confident and ravenous in her pursuit of applause - ailing and alone. As her world increasingly narrows, her hunger for just one more chance to secure her legacy only grows, as does her need for human connection. Lyrical and nuanced, Nashville Chrome hits all the right grace notes with its vivid evocation of an era in American music, while at its heart it is a wrenching meditation on the complexities of fame and of one family - forgotten yet utterly unforgettable when reclaimed by Bass - who experienced them firsthand." - Amazon.
C, by Tom McCarthy. Publisher. Print length: 320 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...experimental new work...reads like W. Somerset Maugham tweaked to a frenetic and distorted frequency." Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (22 reviews). Kindle edition $14.27. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Opening in England at the turn of the twentieth century, C is the story of a boy named Serge Carrefax, whose father spends his time experimenting with wireless communication while running a school for deaf children. Serge grows up amid the noise and silence with his brilliant but troubled older sister, Sophie: an intense sibling relationship that stays with him as he heads off into an equally troubled larger world. After a fling with a nurse at a Bohemian spa, Serge serves in World War I as a radio operator for reconnaissance planes. When his plane is shot down, Serge is taken to a German prison camp, from which he escapes. Back in London, he's recruited for a mission to Cairo on behalf of the shadowy Empire Wireless Chain. All of which eventually carries Serge to a fitful - and perhaps fateful - climax at the bottom of an Egyptian tomb..." - Amazon.
"Each chapter of McCarthy's tour de force is a cryptic, ornate puzzle box, rich with correspondences and emphatically detailed digressions. Ambitious readers will be eager to revisit this endlessly interpretive world, while more casual readers will marvel at the high-flying picaresque perched at the crossroads of science and the stuff dreams are made of." - Publishers Weekly.
The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean, by Susan Casey. Doubleday. Print length: 336 p. NONFICTION. EW's slant: "...delivers a thrill so intense you may never get in a boat again." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (25 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. 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.
NEW IN PAPERBACK AND KINDLE EDITIONS:
The Art of Disappearing, by Ivy Pochoda. St. Martin's Press. Print length: 320 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...beguiling debut." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (16 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"When Mel Snow meets the talented magician Toby Warring in a dusty roadside bar, she is instantly drawn to the brilliant performer whose hands can effortlessly pull stray saltshakers and poker chips from thin air and conjure castles out of the desert sands. Just two days later they are married, beginning their life together in the shadow of Las Vegas, where Toby hopes to make it big. Mel knows that magicians are a dime a dozen, but Toby is different—his magic is real. As Toby's renown grows and Mel falls more and more in love with his wonderments, she starts to realize that Toby's powers are as unstable as they are dazzling...
Bicycle Diaries, by David Byrne. Penguin. Print length: 320 p. NONFICTION. EW's slant: "...gently zingy..." Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (34 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Urban bicycling has become more popular than ever as recession-strapped, climate-conscious city dwellers reinvent basic transportation. In this wide-ranging memoir, artist/musician David Byrne - who has relied on a bike to get around New York City since the early 1980s - relates his adventures as he pedals through and engages with some of the world's major cities. From Buenos Aires to Berlin, he meets a range of people both famous and ordinary, shares his thoughts on art, fashion, music, globalization, and the ways that many places are becoming more bike-friendly....an adventure on two wheels conveyed with humor, curiosity, and humanity." - Amazon.
A Week at the Airport, by Alain De Botton. Vintage. Print length: 112 p. NONFICTION. EW's slant: "One of our most influential essayist and thinkers indulges his somewhat freakish love of airports..." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $9.69. Text-to-Speech: Disabled. Please note: This title has complex layouts and has been optimized for reading on Kindle DX's or Kindle for PC's larger screen, but can still be viewed on other devices.
"Given unprecedented access to one of the world's busiest airports as a 'writer-in-residence,' Alain de Botton found it to be a showcase for many of the major crosscurrents of the modern world - from our faith in technology to our destruction of nature, from our global interconnectedness to our romanticizing of the exotic. He met travelers from all over and spoke with everyone from baggage handlers to pilots to the airport chaplain. Weaving together these conversations and his own observations - of everything from the poetry of room service menus to the eerie silence in the middle of the runway at midnight - de Botton has produced an extraordinary meditation on a place that most of us never slow down enough to see clearly." - from the Trade Paperback editionn.
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