Every fall brings a crop of new releases designed to whet the appetite of any book lover. Read on for recommendations of our top ten in hardcover fiction, paperback fiction, hardcover nonfiction and paperback nonfiction. There's something for everyone on the list! (And stay tuned for our Holiday Selections...coming soon!)

Top Ten Hardcover Fiction

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta
Perrotta is the master of contemporary life and issues.  His previous books are Bad Haircut, Election, Joe College, Little Children and my personal favorite The Wishbones.  His newest work takes on the war between liberals and evangelists.  Ruth Ramsey is the human sexuality teacher at the local high school, and she believes in providing kids with frank yet solid information so they can make good choices.  Ruth’s younger daughter’s soccer coach is a former stoner and rocker whose response to hitting rock bottom was to reach out and be saved.  He belongs to The Tabernacle, an evangelical Christian church that doesn’t approve of Ruth’s style of teaching.  Perrotta explores the complex spiritual and sexual lives of ordinary people and the book is animated with his distinctive mix of satire and compassion.

The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold
Sebold is the celebrated author of Lucky and The Lovely Bones.  Although this book has received mixed reviews, an author of this magnitude should not be dismissed. Library Journal says “Readers who appreciate suspense will find themselves unable to put the book down, especially near the end, when the question of whether or not Helen will escape the consequences of her actions becomes almost too much to bear.  A daring, devastating novel.” 

Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
What could be better than a new, big, fat novel from Richard Russo?  (Straight Man, Pulitzer Prize winning Empire Falls and several others).  This multigenerational tale, also centered on friends and families in a small upstate New York town, follows the fortunes of two families, especially the careers of the respective sons. 

Exit Ghost by Philip Roth
In Roth’s ninth installment in the Zuckerman saga (the first being Ghostwriter), the reclusive author leaves his mountain retreat in the Berkshires to return to New York City for a promising new treatment for incontinence, a lingering reminder of his battle with prostate cancer.  The novel has all of Roth’s signature elements: unreliable narrators, authorial games, meditations on the use and abuse of literature, and Roth’s amazing, brilliant writing.

A Free Life by Ha Jin
Jin’s earlier novels including Waiting, winner of the  National Book Award and and  War Trash, a PEN/Faulkner winner, look back to his homeland of China.  His seventh novel looks at the immigrant experience.  Opening in 1989 after the Tiananmen  Square massacre and spanning nearly a decade, the novel is divided into six parts and follows the Wu family’s fierce determination to make a better life for themselves in America.  A tale of assimilation full of both heart and culture.

Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon
Fans of Karon’s Mitford series will be jumping for joy!  In the first of a promised series of Father Tim novels, Father Tim returns to his birthplace, Holly Springs, Mississippi, in response to a mysterious, unsigned note saying simply “Come home”…..

Run by Ann Patchett
The highly anticipated new novel from the author of Bel Canto is an engrossing story of two families on one fateful night in Boston.  A woman has purposely thrown herself under a car to protect a stranger.  It quickly becomes clear the families - a poor, single black mother with her 11-year old daughter - and a white, Irish Catholic former Boston mayor and his biological son and two adopted black college aged sons, whose much loved wife died over 20 years ago- have a connection. This is not a story about race  but about the depth of a parent’s love of their children, whether adopted, biological, given away or otherwise acquired.

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
Recently nominated for the National Book Award, this is a big, gripping, powerful work that tells the tale of two American families swept up in the secrets and lies of the Vietnam War.  Skip Sands is starting out in the hazy world of the CIA under the tutelage of his uncle, Col. F.X. Sands, a veteran of World War II and many years of mercenary covert actions (you can’t help but think of Apocalypse Now and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as well as Greene’s The Quiet American).  At the bottom of the command chain are brothers Bill Jr and James Houston, members of the alcoholic, sociopathic underclass of rural and Bible Belt America (some of the writing about these brothers is truly brilliant).  The novel proceeds chronologically into the late Sixties, when the war seems not so much lost as running down on the political, military, and cultural energy powering it.  A powerful work that lives up to New York Times critic Chris Offutt’s description: “ a masterpiece”.

World Without End by Ken Follett
In 1989, Follett astonished the literary world with The Pillars of the Earth, a sweeping epic novel set in 12th century England that centered on the building of a cathedral and the hundreds of lives it affected.  This sequel takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries later.  If you are a fan of Pillars or other multilayered epics such as The Once and Future King and The Lord of the Rings, then rejoice!!

And last but definitely not least….. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy!!  I will admit to an obsession with Russian novels, but I am SO EXCITED about the new editions of W&P. War and Peace: Original Translation, translated by Andrew Bromfield, is the original version of Tolstoy’s novel, and much shorter than subsequent translations.  Did Tolstoy intend this to be “the” version, or is this an illuminating insight into Tolstoy’s “first stab” at this amazing novel?  Either way, I want it!!  War and Peace, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is what I’ve been waiting for.  I was transported by their translation of Anna Karenina and cannot wait to escape into their world.  And while we’re at it…. Don’t forget the beautiful edition of War and Peace translated by Anthony Briggs, published by Viking in Feb 2006.  We call it “the big white one”. 

So many books, so little time………!

Top 10 Paperback Fiction

After This by Alice McDermott
Alice McDermott’s sixth novel tells the multi-generational story of the Long Island based Keane family.  When John and Mary marry shortly after WWII, she’s on the verge of spinsterhood and he is a vet haunted by the death of a young private in his platoon.  Catholic faith and Irish heritage anchor John and Mary, but their four children experience their generation’s doubt, rebellion and loss of innocence.  McDermott touches on the issues of the day such as abortion, high-school pregnancy, Vietnam, a trip to the World’s Fair to see Michelangelo’s “Pieta” and a life-changing college year abroad.  McDermott’s perceptive and atmospheric writing is not to be missed.

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak.  This book deserves every bit of the praise it has received and should be required reading for sophisticated teens and adult readers (the book is classified as Young Adult which is typically 12  and up, but should include adults).  The narrator of the story is Death, who travels the globe “handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity.”  Even though Death is kept plenty busy during the course of this WWII tale, he focuses on the lives of ordinary working class Germans in a small town outside of Munich.  The characters are unforgettable - Liesel Meminger, the “book thief”, age 9 when we meet her; her foster parents, Rosa and Hans Huberman; Max, the Jewish fugitive hidden in the Huberman’s basement; Rudy, Liesel’s wild but gentle best friend and neighbor; and even the mayor’s wife, a grief-stricken Nazi who shares her library with the book loving Liesel.  Death is compassionate, struggling to turn away from the survivors left behind to live with “punctured hearts”, yet moved by the tenderness they manage to exhibit even in despair.  Death also directly addresses readers in frequent asides, which lightens the horror and makes the theme even more resonant – WORDS CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE!  This is a poignant tribute to words, survival and the human spirit.

Exile by Richard North Patterson
The mesmerixing story of a lawyer who must defend the woman he loves against a charge of conspiring to assassinate the prime minister of Israel.  This is a hugely entertaining human drama that also offers remarkable insight into the lethal conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

The Gathering by Anne Enright
Recipient of the prestigious Mann Booker Award (2007).  Middle-aged Veronica Hegarty, the middle child in an Irish-Catholic family of nine, traces the aftermath of a tragedy that has claimed the life of rebellious elder brother Liam.  Tempers flare as the family assembles for Liam’s wake, and a secret Veronica has concealed since childhood comes to light.  A melancholic love and rage bubbles just beneath the surface of this Dublin clan, and Enright explores it unflinchingly.

Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende
In the early years of the conquest of the Americas, Ines Suarez, a seamstress condemned to a life of toil, flees Spain to seek adventure in the New World.  As she makes her way to Chile, she begins a fiery romance with Pedro de Valdivia, war hero and field marshal to the famed Francisco Pizarro.  Together the lovers build the new city of Santiago and wage war against the indigenous Chileans.  Allende masterfully dramatizes the known events of Ines Suarez’s life.

The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly
In 1961, when detective Harry Bosch was twelve, his mother, a prostitute, was brutally murdered, and no one was ever accused of the crime.  Harry, who has time on his hands while he is suspended indefinitely for attacking a commanding officer, opens up the thirty-year-old file on the case and is irresistibly drawn into a past he has always avoided.  It is clear that the case was fumbled and the smell of a cover-up is unmistakable….

Paint It Black by Janet Fitch
The author of White Oleander gives us a glimpse of the ‘80s punk rock scene.  Josie Tyrell, art model, runaway and denizen of LA’s rock scene, finds a chance at real love with Michael Faraday, a Harvard dropout and son of a renowned pianist.  But when she receives a call from the coroner asking her to identify Michael’s body, her bright dreams all turn to black. As Josie struggles to understand Michael’s death, she is both attracted to and repelled by his pianist mother, Meredith, who blames Josie for her son’s torment.  Soon the two women are drawn into a twisted relationship that reflects equal parts distrust and blind need.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
In this rousingly good ghost story, Setterfield rejuvenates the genre with a closely plotted, clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies and half-truths.  Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself.  Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past.  Calling on Margaret Lea, a young biographer troubled by her own painful history, Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good.

What is the What: the Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng by Dave Eggers
Eggers is the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and editor of McSweeney’s, a quarterly magazine and book-publishing company.  He also co-founded Voice of Witness, a nonprofit series of books that use oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world.  What is the What is an epic novel based on the life of Deng who, along with thousands of other children – the so called Lost Boys – was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom.  When he finally is resettled in the United States, he finds a life full of promise, but also heartache and a myriad of new challenges.  Moving, suspenseful and unexpectedly funny, this is an astonishing novel.

Top 10 Hardcover Nonfiction

The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World by Alan Greenspan
This is Greenspan’s reckoning with the nature of our new world – how we got here, what we’re living through, and what lies over the horizon, for good and for ill – told through his own experiences.  He begins his account on September 11, 2001, but then leaps back to his childhood, and follows the arc of his remarkable life’s journey through his more than 18-year tenure as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1987 to 2006. 

Clapton by Eric Clapton
One of the most revered and private figures in the history of rock, blues and pop shares his astonishing life story.  As he retraces every step of his career, from the early stints with the Yardbirds and Cream to his solo successes, Clapton also devotes copious detail to his drug and alcohol addictions and turbulent relationships with women, especially Pattie Boyd (check out her autobiography Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me).  This is a bold, intimate, and revealing look at a music icon that will satisfy all readers.

The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy,1943-1944 by Rick Atkinson
Atkinson surpasses his Pulitzer-winning first volume (An Army at Dawn) of this trilogy in this empathetic, perceptive analysis of the second stage in the U.S. Army’s grassroots development from well-intentioned amateurs to the most formidable fighting force of World War II.  The Mediterranean campaign is frequently dismissed by soldiers and scholars as a distraction from the essential objective of invading northern Europe.  Atkinson makes a convincing case that it played a decisive role in breaking German power.

How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard
If civilized people are expected to have read all important works of literature, and thousands more books are published every year, what are we supposed to do in those awkward social situations in which we’re forced to talk about books we haven’t read?  In this delightfully witty, provocative book, a huge hit in France that has drawn attention from critics around the world, literature professor and psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard argues that it’s actually more important to know a book’s role in our collective consciousness than its details.  Read it!

I Am America (and So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert 
From Stephen Colbert, the host of Comedy Central’s highest-rated pundity show “The Colbert Report” comes all of the opinions that Stephen doesn’t have time to shoehorn into his nightly broadcast.  Dictated directly into a microcassette recorder over a three-day weekend, this book contains Stephen’s most deeply held knee-jerk beliefs on The American Family, Race, Religion, Sex, Sports and many, many more topics including hygiene!

Journals 1952-2000 by Arthur Schlesinger
This beautifully packaged, two-volume work offers remarkably fresh and lucid observations on a half-century of public life and a rare and privileged view into the mind of one of America’s most distinguished men of letters.  From his entrance into political leadership circles in the 1950’s through his years in the Kennedy White House and up until his very last days, he was a master historian who enjoyed an extraordinary eyewitness vantage on history as it was being made.   These journals also offer a window into the lives of the wide range of politicians, intellectuals, writers and actors who were his friends – from the Kennedys to the Clintons, from Henry Kissinger to Adlai Stevenson, from Norman Mailer to Lauren Bacall.  Together they form an astonishingly vivid portrait of American politics and culture in the second half of the 20th century.

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin
Toobin takes you into the chambers of the most important – and secret – legal body in our country, the Supreme Court, and reveals the complex dynamic among the nine people who decide the law of the land.  Based on exclusive interviews with justices themselves, The Nine tells the story of the Court through the personalities of the justices and includes a full, behind-the-scenes story of “Bush v Gore”.  Fascinating!

On God: An Uncommon Conversation by Norman Mailer
A towering figure in American literature, Mailer offers his concept of the nature of God.  In moving, amusing, probing dialogues conducted over a three year period but whose topics he has considered for decades, Mailer establishes his own system of belief, one that rejects both organized religion and atheism.  In this small, yet important book, Mailer gives us fresh ways to think about the largest subject of them all.

Schultz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis
Charles Schultz, the most widely syndicated and beloved cartoonist of all time, is also one of the most misunderstood figures in American culture.  Biographer Michaelis was given access to family, friends and personal papers, and reveals the full extent of Schultz’s depression.  Nearly 250 Peanuts strips are woven into the biography, demonstrating just how much of his life story Schulz poured into the cartoon.

The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman
Ackerman tells the remarkable WWII story of Jan Zabinski, the director of the Warsaw Zoo, and his wife, Antonina, who, with courage and coolheaded ingenuity, sheltered 300 Jews as well as Polish resisters in their villa and in animal cages and sheds.  This suspenseful and beautifully crafted story is an exciting and unforgettable portrait of courage and grace under fire.

Top 10 Paperback Nonfiction

The Blind Side: The Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis
The Blind Side is at once a shrewd analysis of the NFL, an expose of the insanity of big-time college football recruiting and, finally, a moving portrait of the positive effect that love, family, and education can have in reversing the path of a life that was destined to be lived unhappily and, most likely, to end badly. Lewis, author of bestsellers Moneyball and Liar's Poker, explores the growing importance of the offensive tackle who protects the quarterback's "blind side" through the unlikely story of Michael Oher, an intermittently homeless Memphis ghetto kid taken in by a rich white family and a Christian high school. Oher's preternatural size and agility soon has every college coach in the country courting him.

Hometown Santa Monica: The Bay Cities Book edited by Colleen Dunn Bates
Even locals will enjoy this unique guidebook to our very own backyard.  Hometown Santa Monica explores the Bay City and her neighbors like no traditional guidebook can. This new sibling of the bestseller Hometown Pasadena introduces you to the most interesting people in town (like our very own Katie O'Laughlin - see p. 116!), tells you the most fascinating stories, and whispers in your ear where to find the best antiques store, oceanview restaurant, art gallery, quiet bookstore (Village Books, of course!) or convivial coffeehouse. Hometown Santa Monica looks deep inside the culture of one of the country's most beautiful and influential cities to reveal a community pulsating with nature, history, intelligence, fashion and fame. This is not just a book for those visiting the area - it is also for those of us lucky enough to live here!

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century - 1951 - in the middle of the United States - Des Moines, Iowa - in the middle of the largest generation in American history - the baby boomers. This latest follow-up to A Short History of Nearly Everything, delves more deeply into his midwestern roots in a bittersweet, laugh-out-loud recollection of his growing-up years. "I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive than America in the 1950s," Bryson notes. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. Those sure were the days!

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
The events are familiar and yet Wright brings a fresh, character-driven approach to the events leading up to and including 9/11. The tragic centerpiece of the book is Wright's sensitive portrayal of John O'Neill, the deeply flawed working-class FBI gumshoe from New Jersey who may have been the only American to fully understand the al-Qaeda threat before 9/11. The Looming Tower is a perceptive and intense page-turner, a National Book Award Finalist, a Time, Newsweek, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and New York Times Book Review "Best Book of the Year" and Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction. Sure sounds like required reading to me!

My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'Homme
If you can't get on a plane and go to France, reading this book might just be the next best thing. With Julia Child's death in 2004 at age 91, her grandnephew Prud'homme completed this personal memoir of the famous chef's first, formative sojourn to France with her new husband, Paul Child, in 1949. She spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself but as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life - and ours - were changed forever by her newfound passion for cooking and teaching.

The New Kings of Nonfiction edited by Ira Glass
Anyone who listens to NPR will recognize the editor of this anthology of the best new masters of nonfiction storytelling. Ira Glass, the producer and host of the award-winning public radio program This American Life, picks out 14 of his favorite journalistic features from writers who are entertainers in the best sense of the word. The selections, including pieces on teenage white collar criminals, buying a cow, Saddam Hussein, drunken British soccer culture, and how we know everyone in our Rolodex, are meant to mesmerize and inspire.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
A national bestseller that has changed the way readers view the ecology of eating, this revolutionary book by award winner Michael Pollan asks the seemingly simple question: What should we have for dinner? Tracing from source to table each of the food chains that sustain us, he develops a portrait of the American way of eating. The result is a sweeping, surprising exploration of the moral and ecological consequences of our food. Critics agree it's a wake-up call and, written in clear, informative prose, also entertaining. So much for mindless eating

Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy by Ian W. Toll
Toll, a former financial analyst and political speechwriter, makes an auspicious debut with this rousing, exhaustively researched history of the founding of the U.S. Navy. The author chronicles the late 18th- and early 19th-century process of building a fleet that could project American power beyond her shores with the political insight of Founding Brothers and a narrative flair worthy of Patrick O'Brian. A must-read for fans of naval history and the early American Republic.

Thunderstruck by Erik Larsen
The many who devovured Erik Larson's previous book, The Devil in the White City will be similarly spellbound by Thunderstruck which tells the story of one of the greatest criminal chases of all time. The author combines two disparate stories: one of Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian discoverer of radio waves, and the other an English doctor who poisoned his unfaithful wife. Their stories converge on a trans-Atlantic ship with the doctor fleeing justice while his getaway is broadcast to the world via the new wireless transmissions. An  intense, intelligent page-turner that will have you on the edge of your seat!

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler
Walt Disney (1900 - 1966) was arguably the most influential figure in 20th-century American culture and Gabler is the first writer to have complete access to the Walt Disney archives. The result is this meticulously researched biography, offering the full story of an American icon. Gabler reveals how Disney revolutionized the entertainment industry in a way that was unprecedented and later widely imitated, building a synergistic empire that combined film, television, theme parks, music, book publishing, and merchandise.