Staff Picks

From Kathleen: Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong ($22.95) I love how accessible Karen Armstrong makes religious and faith concepts, and her latest book is a wondeful example of this. The book itself is the product of a much larger program, Charter for Compassion, already initiated world wide. As the title implies, Armstrong offers readers twelve steps to cultivate compassion in our lives, somewhat similiar in concept to the twelve steps in the Blue Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. As individuals, when we make a commitment to a more compassionate life, it spreads outwards from ourselves. She shows us how all faiths have a version of the Golden Rule - do unto others as you would have others do unto you - and takes us further on a path to truly incorporate the Golden Rule into our lives. This is a book to savor and linger with while making little adjustments each day in how we engage with the world around us.

From Elizabeth: Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan ($25.99) In this beautifully written memoir, the author takes the reader to the mysterious world of Nepal. What starts as an adventure in 2004 when Grennan decides to take a year to travel ends as a commitment to the children he met in Kathmandu.  He volunteered for three months in the Little Princes Children's Home, fell in love with the children there and vowed to return at the end of his travels.  Upon learning that the children were not really orphans but victims of a notorious child trafficker, he set out to locate some of the children who had disappeared and to find the parents in a remote area of Nepal. Conor has created a nonprofit organization, Next Generation Nepal which continues to reconnect children with their families.  The story is told with empathy, humor and page turning excitment--I could not put it down! [Vicky loved this book too!] 

From Karen: The Death Instinct by Jed Rubenfeld ($26.95; our price: $21.56) This is an absorbing historical mystery novel based partly on fact and partly on the author's imagining of who actually set off a bomb on Wall Street in 1920, the worst terrorist attack on US soil at the time. Three dozen people were killed and many factions were blamed, including Communists and Anarchists (any Russian and Italian immigrants were suspected). A fascinating time in history, just after WWI, early days of Prohibition, the discovery of radium (which plays a part in the story), and the prejudice inflicted on immigrants. A great mystery with a big bite of US history! [By the way, Jed is the husband of Amy Chua, the author of the controversial new book The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother] 

From Rita: Brooklyn by Colm Toibin ($15.00)  Ellis Lacy is a young girl growing up in Ireland in the difficult years following World War II.  An Irish priest from Brooklyn sponsors her to come to America. Ellis works in Brooklyn and falls in love with an Italian boy.  Just as she begins to feel at home, she receives devastating news from Ireland that will threaten her future, forcing her to decide whether or not she should stay. The characters are both interesting and believable, making this a moving and satisfying read.   

From Vicky: The Tickle Monster Laughter Kit by Josie Bissett ($34.95; our price: $28.02) Cute! Cute! Cute!! The Tickle Monster Laughter Kit by Josie Bissett is laugh out loud silly and a sure winner for ages 1-6.  Inside the kit is a hardcover edition of Tickle Monster, the story of a monster who comes from the Planet Tickle to bring joy and laughter to Earth.  He does this by tickling various body parts.  The story is told in rhyme (my favorite for little ones!) and best of all it comes with wonderful soft blue fuzzy tickle mitts with holes for fingers so you can turn pages and do some really good tickling throughout the story.    

A Wind to Shake the World: The Story of the 1938 Hurricane by Everett S. Allen ($17.95)
A fascinating history by a Martha's Vineyard man who, at the age of 21, started his first newspaper job in New Bedford the day of the 1938 hurricane.   His strong knowledge of the sea and his remarkable ability to bring this story to life through the eyes of the people who survived it - and he interviewed hundreds of survivors over a 2 year period - make this a fascinating read.  Imagine winds blowing up to 186 mph and a 20-40 foot wall of water hitting parts of the coast from New York to Cape Cod - whole neighborhoods floating out to sea, sometimes with people desperately clinging to the roofs of their homes.  It all comes to life vividly and dramatically.  There is also a very insightful introduction as Allen talks about his life as a young man on Martha's Vineyard at the end of the Great Depression.  

The Evolution of Calpernia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly ($7.99) The Evolution of Calpernia Tate is out in paperback this month and it is one of the most delightful and well written children's books of the year (in our humble opinion).  Calpernia is a young girl growing up in Texas in 1899 in a  family which includes 6 brothers and a very gruff grandfather who loves science and introduces Calpernia to Darwin and his theories.  The book is funny and sweet and a superb portrait of family life at the turn of the century.  It reminds me of one of those classic tales, such as Little House on the Prairie.  Now that it's out in paperback, we hope even more children will read it.  (And parents, when your child is finished, you should borrow it, too!)   Ages 8-13.

From Andy Dunn (guest reviewer): The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss ($16.00) Charting new ground for the Titcomb Book Reviews of the Upper Cape, perhaps, I set quill to scrollbar and offer musings on the most-heralded fantasy tome of present times. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is the first book in a planned trilogy of sword, sorcery, and balladeering. This story within a story of a famed yet down-on-his-luck hero within a magical/medieval landscape is much better written than most other genre works, though perhaps not enough to warrant the endless blurbs by the likes of Ursula Le Guin, The London Times, et al. Regardless, most of the 700+ pages are good page turners and there is little of the milking stretchery so common in the modern series (see Tad Williams's "Otherland" books, or not). Rothfuss's use of language is quite direct and readable, yet subtly musical -- similar in some ways to Orson Scott Card's "Alvin Maker" series, but without the colloquialisms. I'd recommend it as a good read now, since the second in the series, The Wise Man's Fear, is slated for a March release.

New and Recommended
 

The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman ($25.00; our price: $20.00) In exquisite prose, Hoffman introduces us to the luminous and haunting world of Blackwell, Massachusetts, presenting us with some three hundred years of passion, dark secrets, loyalty, and redemption in a web of tales where characters' lives are intertwined by fate and by their own actions.

From the town's founder, a brave young woman from England who has no fear of blizzards or bears, to the young man who runs away to New York City with only his dog for company, the characters in The Red Garden are extraordinary and vivid. At the center of everyone's life is a mysterious garden where only red plants can grow, and where the truth can be found by those who dare to look.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

 ($25.95; our price: $19.96) From the author of the heralded short-story collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves comes a blazingly original debut novel that takes us to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine.

Shuchi, Titcomb's newest bookseller, is a huge fan of Karen Russell. She hasn't yet read this book, but she has read the story that it originated from.  She says, "What makes Karen's imaginative stories so good is the way she writes them - the prose is stunning, lyrical, and reminds you of just how magical, and adult, adolescence can be. Even those who shy away from more fantastical stories will be taken away by her writing." Look out for a full review of Swamplandia! in the next newsletter!  

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake (now in paperback - $15.00) In 1940, Iris James is the postmistress on Cape Cod. She knows more about the townspeople than she will ever say and believes her job is to deliver secrets. Yet one day she does the unthinkable: slips a letter into her pocket, reads it, and doesn't deliver it. 

The Postmistress is a tale of two worlds-one shattered by violence, the other willfully naive-and of two women whose job is to deliver the news, yet who find themselves unable to do so.
 

The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene ($29.95) From the best-selling author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos comes his most expansive and accessible book to date--a book that takes on the grandest question: Is ours the only universe?

There was a time when "universe" meant all there is. Everything. Yet, in recent years discoveries in physics and cosmology have led a number of scientists to conclude that our universe may be one among many.  

Greene, one of our foremost physicists and science writers, takes us on a captivating exploration of these parallel worlds and reveals how much of reality's true nature may be deeply hidden within them.   

We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen

West of Here by Jonathan Evison ($24.95; our price: $19.96) Set in the fictional town of Port Bonita, on Washington State's rugged Pacific coast, West of Here is propelled by a story that both re-creates and celebrates the American experience-it is storytelling on the grandest scale. With one segment of the narrative focused on the town's founders circa 1890 and another showing the lives of their descendants in 2006, the novel develops as a kind of conversation between two epochs, one rushing blindly toward the future and the other struggling to undo the damage of the past.

Ghost Light by Joseph O'Connor ($25.00; our price: $20.00) At the Abbey Theatre, resident playwright John Synge meets an actress still in her teens named Molly Allgood. Rebellious, irreverent, beautiful, flirtatious, Molly is a girl of the inner-city tenements, dreaming of stardom in America. Witty and watchful, she has dozens of admirers, but it is the damaged older playwright who is her secret passion despite the barriers of age, class, education, and religion.

Vivid and beautifully written, Molly's swirling, narrative moves from 1907 Edwardian Dublin to 1950s postwar London via New York with luminous language and raw feeling.