Phoenix Books and Cafe


The Phoenix Review

August 2009


Dear Friends,

Howard Dean's Prescription for Healthcare ReformYou've seen him on The Charlie Rose Show, in Publishers Weekly, and on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann - not to mention at Phoenix Books!  Vermont's former governor, Howard Dean, has become the go-to guy for health care reform issues.  If you didn't make his event at Phoenix last month, find out what he has to say in his new book, Howard Dean's Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform, available in person or online from Phoenix Books.

In this edition of the Phoenix Review, we've included an assortment of up-and-coming fiction, reflective nonfiction, and portable paperbacks for squeezing every last drop out of summer.  In case you prefer to purchase online and have books shipped to you, the cover images below link to our online storefront.  We also hope you'll come in for our events, for some you-time at our cafe, or to let us help you find even more great reads - and savor the summer with us.

Sincerely,
The staff of Phoenix Books

EVENTS AUGUST EVENTS
  Featuring...You!
Applause at Phoenix Books
Our Open Mic Night will take place on Wednesday, August 5, from 6:00-8:00 pm.  Come check out the local talent at your local, independent bookstore!  Want to be the local talent?  Call 872-7111 and ask for Michael to sign up.

We have two Knit Nights (Crocheters, too!) this month:  The usual second Wednesday on August 12 from 6:00-8:00 pm, as well as Tuesday, August 25th from 6:00-8:00 pm.  All skill levels welcome.  See you there!

Visit our website for more info.  Events at Phoenix are free and open to the public.

CAFE THE CAFE AT PHOENIX
   New FlavorsSun

Try our newest smoothie, the Tropical Colada: a frozen coconutty, pineapple, tropical beach escape in a cup!
shelvesNEW FICTION

  From Sisters to Spies, and Ann Arbor to Shanghai

Shanghai Girls, by Lisa See
Shanghai Girls"See's skillful plotting and richly drawn characters immediately draw in the reader..."  --Publishers Weekly
In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, a city of great wealth and glamor. Thanks to the financial security provided by their father's prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. In most ways, the sisters couldn't be more different; but both wave off authority and tradition, and are beautiful, modern, and carefree . . . until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides...


Short Girls, by Bich Minh Nguyen
Short Girls"Highly recommended."  --Library Journal
Van and Linny Luong are as baffling to each other as their parents' Vietnamese legacy is to them both. Van, the quintessential overachiever, has applied the same studied diligence to her law career and marriage. Linny - pretty, fashionable, untethered - is grasping for purpose when her affair with a married man takes a humiliating turn. Each is the last person her sister would call, but when Mr. Luong summons them home for his American citizenship party, Van and Linny find themselves communing about their past, and these unlikely confidantes forge a tentative new relationship and the wherewithal to overcome disappointment.


Bad Things Happen, by Harry Dolan
Bad Things Happen"A twisty whodunit with a thriller's pace"  --Booklist
The man who calls himself David Loogan is leading a quiet, anonymous life in the college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. He's hoping to escape a violent past he would rather forget. But his solitude is broken when he finds himself drawn into a friendship with Tom Kristoll, the publisher of the mystery magazine "Gray Streets" - and into an affair with Laura, Tom's sleek blond wife. What Loogan doesn't realize is that the stories in "Gray Streets" tend to follow a simple formula: Plans go wrong. Bad things happen. People die...




Glover's Mistake, by Nick Laird
Glover's Mistake"Another sharply observed book by a very funny writer..."  --Kirkus Review
When David Pinner introduces his former teacher, the American artist Ruth Marks, to his friend and flatmate James Glover, he unwittingly sets in place a love triangle loaded with tension, guilt, and heartbreak. As David plays reluctant witness (and more) to James and Ruth's escalating love affair, he must come to terms with his own blighted emotional life. Set in the London art scene awash with new money and intellectual pretension, Nick Laird's insightful and drolly satirical novel vividly portrays three people whose world gradually fractures along the ineluctable fault lines of desire, truth, deceit, and jealousy.


Free Agent, by Jeremy Duns
Free Agent"...superior fiction, with an unexpected twist..."  --Library Journal
A riveting spy thriller that spans two continents and probes the limits of loyalty and love, Jeremy Duns' lightning-paced debut introduces a morally complex and unforgettable agent named Paul Dark into the canon of espionage literature. In June 1945, Dark joins his father in a top-secret mission to hunt down and unofficially execute Nazi war criminals. Almost twenty-five years later, Dark is a seasoned agent for MI6 when a KGB officer turns up in Nigeria wanting to defect. Free Agent is the spectacular story of one man's fight for survival and search for the truth about his father's death and his lover's betrayal.

NONFICTION

  Never Stop Learning

In Pursuit of Elegance, by Matthew E. May
In Pursuit of EleganceWhy the Best Ideas Have Something Missing
In this thought-provoking exploration of why certain events, products, and people capture our attention and imaginations, Matthew E. May examines the elusive element behind so many innovative breakthroughs in fields ranging from physics and marketing to design and popular culture. Combining unusual simplicity and surprising power, elegance is characterized by four key elements--seduction, subtraction, symmetry, and sustainability. In a compelling, story-driven narrative that sheds light on the need for elegance in design, engineering, art, urban planning, sports, and work, May offers surprising evidence that what's "not there" often trumps what is.


Always By My Side:  The Healing Gift of a Father's Love, by Jim Nantz
Always by my Side"Wonderfully well-written and heartfelt"  --Don Imus
As vivid as an instant replay, Always by My Side gives readers an insider's look into an unprecedented sixty-three- day stretch from February through April of 2007, when Jim Nantz became the first broadcaster to call the Super Bowl, the Final Four, and the Masters. Though Nantz was unable to share the voyage with his dad, the devoted son felt his father's presence every step of the way, and used this championship odyssey to celebrate the people, venues, and moments that tapped into all the goodness that his dad - and his dad's generation - represent.




This I Believe II: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women, This I Believe IIed. by Jay Allison
"Reading this gives me a feeling about this country I rarely get: a very visceral sense of all the different kinds of people who are living together here, with crazily different backgrounds and experiences and dreams."  --Ira Glass
This collection of essays gathers seventy-five essayists - ranging from famous to previously unknown - completing the thought that begins the book's title. With contributors who run the gamut from cellist Yo-Yo Ma, to professional skateboarder Tony Hawk, to a diner waitress, an Iraq War veteran, a farmer, a new husband, and many others, This I Believe II, like the first New York Times bestselling collection, showcases moving and irresistible essays.

PICNIC PAPERBACKS

  To Make Summer Last

The Little Book, by Selden Edwards
The Little Book"Delightfully mad...a thrilling adventure." --San Francisco Chronicle
Thirty years in the writing, Selden Edwards's dazzling first novel is a triumph of the imagination. Wheeler Burden - banking heir, philosopher, student of history, legend's son, rock idol, writer, lover, recluse, half-Jew, and Harvard baseball hero - one day finds himself wandering not in his hometown of San Francisco in 1988 but in a city and time he knows mysteriously well: Vienna, 1897. Before long, Wheeler acquires a mentor in Sigmund Freud, a bitter rival, a powerful crush on a luminous young woman, and encounters everyone from an eight-year-old Adolf Hitler to Mark Twain as well as the young members of his own family.


Sarah's Key, by Tatiana De Rosnay
Sarah's Key"Masterly and compelling..." --Library Journal
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours. Paris, May 2002: Journalist Julia Jarmond stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France. Tatiana de Rosnay offers a subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.



The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008, ed. by Laura Furman
O Henry Prize Stories 2008"Widely regarded as the nation's most prestigious awards for short fiction."  --The Atlantic Monthly
An annual collection of the twenty best contemporary short stories selected by series editor Laura Furman, The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008 features extraordinary settings and characters: a teenager in survivalist Alaska, the seed keeper of a doomed Chinese village, a young woman trying to save her life in a Ukrainian internet cafe. Also included are the winning writers' comments on what inspired them, a short essay from each of the three eminent jurors, and an extensive resource list of literary magazines.


BOOK CLUB PICK OF THE MONTH

  The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories (2009), ed. by Laura Furman
Pen/O. Henry Prize Stories
A collection of the twenty best contemporary short stories selected from hundreds of literary magazines, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009 is studded with great writers such as Junot Diaz, Nadine Gordimer, Ha Jin, and Paul Theroux, as well as new voices.


Did you know?  Book clubs are eligible for a 15% discount on books ordered from Phoenix!  At least five copies must be ordered, and all copies must be purchased through your book club's coordinator, for discount to apply.

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