Each week we spotlight one book from the IndieNext List (a collection of recommendations by indie booksellers across the country). Ask for a copy of the IndieNext newsletter at our front counter or click to browse them online

Zone One

Hardcover, Doubleday

Each week we like to showcase a few of the great books on our shelves. Here are just a few titles we think are special:

Fiction

Ghost Lights

Lydia Millet 

Hardcover,  

WW Norton

A funny and haunting new novel from "one of the most acclaimed novelists of her generation" The Los Angeles Times.  Hal is a mild-mannered IRS bureaucrat who suspects that his wife is cheating with her younger, more virile coworker.  At a drunken dinner party, Hal volunteers to fly to Belize in search of Susan's employer, T. the protagonist of Lydia Millet's much-lauded novel How the Dead Dream who has vanished in a tropical jungle, initiating a darkly humorous descent into strange and unpredictable terrain.

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Mule  

Tony D'Souza  

Paperback, Mariner Books   

James and Kate are golden children of the late twentieth century, flush with opportunity.  But an economic downturn and an unexpected pregnancy send them searching for a way to make do.  A winter in the mountains of California's Siskiyou County introduces a tempting opportunity.  A friend grows prime-grade marijuana; if James transports just one load from Cali to Florida, he'll pull down enough cash to survive for months.  James navigates life as a mule, then a boss-from moneyhungry friends to gun-toting drug lords, from Sacramento to Tallahassee, from just making the weight move cross-country to making thousands of dollars a day.  The risks keep rising, forcing him to the next criminal level.  A kidnapping, a shootout, a bank vault-it all culminates in a swirl of action.

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Nonfiction

Spencer Tracy

James Curtis 

Hardcover, Knopf

His full name was Spencer Bonaventure Tracy.  He was called "The Gray Fox" by Frank Sinatra; other actors called him the "The Pope."  Spencer Tracy's image on-screen was that of a self-reliant man whose sense of rectitude toward others was matched by his sense of humor toward himself.  Whether he was Father Flanagan of Boys Town, Clarence Darrow of Inherit the Wind, or the crippled war veteran in Bad Day at Black Rock, Tracy was forever seen as a pillar of strength.  In his several comedy roles opposite Katharine Hepburn (Woman of the Year and Adam's Rib among them) or in Father of the Bride with Elizabeth Taylor, Tracy was the sort of regular American guy one could depend on.  Now James Curtis, acclaimed biographer of Preston Sturges ("Definitive" -Variety), James Whale, and W. C. Fields ("By far the fullest, fairest, and most touching account . . . we have yet had.  Or are likely to have" -Richard Schickel, The New York Times Book Review, cover review), gives us the life of one of the most revered screen actors of his generation.  Curtis writes of Tracy's distinguished career, his deep Catholicism, his devoted relationship to his wife, his drinking that got him into so much trouble, and his twenty-six-year-long bond with his partner on-screen and off, Katharine Hepburn.  Drawing on Tracy's personal papers and writing with the full cooperation of Tracy's daughter, Curtis tells the rich story of the brilliant but haunted man at the heart of the legend.

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Essential Pepin: More Than 700 All-Time Favorites from My Life in Food  

Jacques Pepin

Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

For the first time ever, the legendary chef collects and updates the best recipes from his six-decade career.  With a searchable DVD demonstrating every technique a cook will ever need.  In his more than sixty years as a chef, Jacques P�pin has earned a reputation as a champion of simplicity. His recipes are classics.  They find the shortest, surest route to flavor, avoiding complicated techniques.  Now, in a book that celebrates his life in food, the world's most famous cooking teacher winnows his favorite recipes from the thousands he has created, streamlining them even further.  They include Onion Soup Lyonnaise-Style, which Jacques enjoyed as a young chef while bar-crawling in Paris; Linguine with Clam Sauce and Vegetables, a frequent dinner chez Jacques; Grilled Chicken with Tarragon Butter, which he makes indoors in winter and outdoors in summer; Five-Peppercorn Steak, his spin on a bistro classic; M�m�'s Apple Tart, which his mother made every day in her Lyon restaurant; and Warm Chocolate Fondue Souffl�, part cake, part pudding, part souffl�, and pure bliss.

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For Young Readers 

The Princess and the Pig

Jonathan Emmett, Poly Bernatene    

Hardcover, Walker Children's Books   

There's been a terrible mix-up in the royal nursery.  Priscilla the princess has accidentally switched places with Pigmella, the farmer's new piglet.  The kindly farmer and his wife believe it's the work of a good witch, while the ill-tempered king and queen blame the bad witch after all, this happens in fairy tales all the time!  While Priscilla grows up on the farm, poor yet very happy, things don't turn out quite so well for Pigmella.  Kissing a frog has done wonders before, but will it work for a pig?

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